Spy Vs Spy:
There is added interest in the Russo Brothers’ spy thriller Citadel, because it stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas. There is also an Indian version of the franchise in the making, with Varun Dhawan in the lead. Two episodes of the series have been released on Amazon Prime, and a new one will drop every Friday—bad strategy, because the first two are not all that impressive. The show, going by two episodes, is silly fun in a generic spy-vs-spy format, but not an eyeball-grabbing gamechanger.
When she makes her entrance in a train traversing the Italian Alps, hips swaying in a revealing red dress, Nadia Sinh (Chopra Jonas) has a semi-flirty dialogue with Mason Kane (Richard Madden) in several languages for no reason but that they are super-skilled operatives belonging to a spy organisation, Citadel. They work to keep the world safe from rogue agencies, and are on the trail of a bag of Uranium being transported by a Russian (absurdity alert, right there!) After a brisk action sequence– Kane in the luxurious bathroom with one baddie, Sinh in the chair car with another– the train crashes and both are believed dead. With them Citadel, controlled by tech genius Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), is destroyed and buried for good, by evil rival organization Manticore, that has its logo tattooed on the skins of its members. This is headed by Dahlia Archer (Lesley Manville), British ambassador to the US.
Kane and Sinh are not dead, of course, or there would be no series, they have their memories remotely wiped out and they are next seen eight years later, living under new identities—he has a wife and daughter, she runs a restaurant. Orlick needs the reactivated Kane to steal a case that contains nuclear codes as well as their memories in vials (absurdity hits red alert), and then go collect Sinh. In eight years, Citadel has not restaffed, Manticore hasn’t opened the case, and are just waiting for Kane to arrive to pick it up so that the mandatory car chase can follow.
The biggest problem with Citadel, created by Josh Appelbaum, Bryan Oh and David Weil, and directed by Newton Thomas Sigel (four episodes), is its spectacular lack of originality. It just assumes audiences have not seen any James Bond or Jason Bourne movies (to name just two) and wings it from there.
There are well-orchestrated action set pieces in the two episodes, dutifully smart banter and the usual globe-trotting, but future seasons will have to work doubly hard—this one is hijacked by the fabulous Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville, leaving the good-looking leads fiddling with knives and guns.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
