Reviews

OK first the good points.

It's sumptuous! From the architecture, to the costumes, to the dialogues, to the performances... everything shouts or should I say sings 19C Italy.

I love the Italian, which I get better at catching as the programme progresses. The actors are very well cast.

Everything one would expect and hope to enjoy in a period piece set in 19C Italy is there.

So why did I only give it 6 out of 10?

Spoiler alert!

Because at 26mins into the first, the very first episode...

They introduced... Rock Music!!! Modern 21C Rock Music...

I mean, I ask you. Who in their right minds would spoil a wonderful, beautiful period piece set in the 19C, by introducing 21C Rock Music?!!! I was shocked!

I'm having to consider very seriously whether to carry on with it. I can normally overlook visual gaffs, but such a fundamental anomaly in the audio is just so out of place...

Such a shame, it really is... We shall see...

I've just watched this series for the 2nd time. It doesn't disappoint.

Ryan Philippe is very well cast... he has the intensity, the build and the movement of a sniper.

His wife and daughter also fit in well.

The characters are more or less believable. None of the 'baddies' are horrific, and the 'heroes' are likeable.

It does bear repeated viewing.

I enjoyed the sniper sequences. Some of the fight scenes were 'weird', and too many were in the dark... His wife was very well played, her descent from fully supporting him to barely trusting him... But why they had to end the series with her as they did is beyond me. Lousy ending. But overall very enjoyable series.

At least he has the final word/shot to finish the bad guy off. But his wife and child deserved a better ending.

Warning SPOILERS!!!

Description of how the final scenes unfold.

The highlight of this is when the team try to capture the Hezbollah baddy, but instead he leads them into a trap.

The Army patrol chasing the Baddy gets caught in an ambush. The Team try to assist the patrol after army reinforcements are blocked. The team have to clear a building full of the Baddy and his men while the Army patrol is taking casualties.

But...there is a Hezbollah sniper in the building, who injures the Team members one by one. Finally Doron with the woman in the team enters the building and manages to kill the Baddy, while being injured himself. So the whole episode ends with all the Team lying on the ground in the rain, wounded and...dying? With Doron reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

I was wondering all along why the HQ didn't just fire a missile from a drone into the building and clear out the Baddies in one fell swoop?

Well, obviously this would have 'killed' the dramatic possibilities of this ending... We won't know who survived until... Fauda5?

So definitely the Best...and Worst...Fauda ending...

I watched this mainly for Richard Madden, who is a very sympathetic actor in any character role. I like that he is Scottish!

The supporting cast is also good, and the story is well told... up to a point.

SPOILERS!

It goes swimmingly up to E4, where The Explosion occurs. Now, anyone watching that event can see (and my eyesight is not of the best) quite clearly... that The Explosion comes from under the structure, and not from anything portable. It's a planted device exploding, not an S-Vest or S-Briefcase. I honestly can't see how anyone can mistake this.

And yet the story spends an entire episode investigating it as a briefcase bomb. Until Fort '???' sends The Report to say 'No...it was planted'. Jeez! You don't need a specialist to tell you that... it's plain as daylight!

And now, the Police are made to look like the most incompetent, stupid plods on TV. Truly idiotic. On top of which, their political bosses at the Home Office are seemingly more interested in fighting, backstabbing and undermining each other than in catching the culprits. Quite unbelievable!

Then this thing about the jihadi woman being interviewed by police, who from the start make all manner of unwarranted d assumptions, PC/MC assumptions about her... Quite ridiculous!

You would have thought they would get in a police officer of South Asian origin and female, to handle this jihadi, an officer who should be privy to any wiles and deceits she might employ that non-Asian police would be unaware of. But of course this 'cultural misunderstanding' was an underlying theme of the entire series, behind the question of 'who made the bombs and organized the attacks.

This is what I mean by 'ghastly plot holes'. I ended up almost screaming at the police, 'why are you all so stupid'? I mean, they had a male South Asian officer, Sharma, who seemed completely unaware of the jihadis deceptions despite being of similar ethnic origin.

The trouble with the plot holes is that they really do undermine the integrity of the story. This is why I only give it 5/10. It would deserve more but for these plot holes.

Nice period piece from Israel. From the Ottoman Period through the British Mandate to... I like the period recreation. It has a good feel to it. Can't assess the 'accuracy' of the Jewish cultural, as I'm not an expert on those aspects.

I always like Michael Aloni performances. He was excellent on 'When Heroes fly' and of course 'Shtisel'. Then there is Itzhik Cohen from Fauda (Captain Ayub). The performances are uniformly top-notch.

I would imagine the period is historically accurately portrayed in general. Life in Jewish Palestine, the Yishuv under the Mandate was well-documented. The paradox and underlying 'dislike' between Sephardi Ladino-speaking Jews and Ashkenazi European Yiddish-speaking Jews esp. The Hassidim, is the underlying context of the story of the forbidden love between Gavriel and Rochel. Esp. Before the State of Israel, in the Mandate Palestine Yishuv, Ashkenazim and Sephardim did not mix. The Sephardim spoke Ladino, a sort of Judeo-Spanish, while the Ashkenazim spoke Yiddish which was a sort of Judeo-German (Jude-Deutsch > Yud-Disch>Yiddish). The Ashkenazim were Jews from Germany to Poland/Russia while the Sephardim originated in Spain from the Middle Ages. Mandate Palestine, the Yishuv, was the setting for both extreme intra-Jewish culture clashes...and some remarkable intra-Jewish combinations... These aspects all come out in this series.

For this then, 7 out of 10.

However, there are two aspects that are bothersome.

Firstly the series flits back and forth between 1922 and 1937. I find this quite confusing as I frequently forget which era we are watching. The confusion inhibits proper appreciation of the story and the context.

Secondly, and this is probably only noticeable to history buffs... the British Army in Mandate Palestine is very badly portrayed. The scene where Luna goes to the British Officers Club... Emphasis on 'Officers'.

In the British Army, then as now, there is the Officers' Mess, and the Sergeants' Mess, and the two simply did not and do not mix...EVER! Esp. Not in that period.

The first soldier who speaks to Luna in that scene, in this Officers' Club...is a Sergeant, with 3 stripes very prominently displayed on his rolled up sleeve. It just hit me as so wrong, that they couldn't get something as basic as that right in a period piece. It kind of ruined the whole effect for me.

So only a 7 for a series that probably otherwise deserves a10! Apologies, but producers...Get Your Facts Right!

I like historical dramas set in the 18thC New World. 'Last of the Mohicans' being my favourite.

So, I enjoy the actors playing the Cree characters speaking Cree. The old Cree lady I last saw in Dances with Wolves.

Now, I really like Alun Armstrong. He was wonderful in 'New Tricks' on UK TV in the 90s/2000s. But he is a Northerner, a Geordie. He is great as a Northerner... but I can hear him straining to produce Southern RP British English. He really has to make an effort to get the southern British English RP vowels right, and it makes his performance a bit 'stilted'. But I still like his performance despite that.

However, something the Yanks seem to get wrong is the British class system. They don't understand it. Yanks and Canadians. They have an American actor playing the British Captain/Governor Chesterfield. And the actor playing this has chosen to adopt a 'working class East End London' accented British English. This is a HUGE mistake.

Even in the 20/21C, Army officers in the British army would NEVER speak like that, like common working class East End London types. The class system would forbid such from ever becoming officers, even in the 20/21C. But especially not in the 18C!

In the 18C Class was everything! Officers had to be wealthy enough to buy their commissions, and 100% they were aristocrat or wealthy public school educated types. They were NEVER working class East end London types, such as this Chesterfield is portrayed as. So yes, it is a HUGE error. If they couldn't get this right, such a fundamental historical reality, they shouldn't have produced the show... Unfortunately, it's an almost Universal Truth that American/North American produced shows ALWAYS get the foreign wrong. I have yet to watch an American show where they get the foreign right. The US audience doesn't care, while the European audience will feel offended, or ridiculed. Or at best will laugh at the absurdity of how wrong the Yanks get the foreign.

So, a 6 for the overall quality and enjoyability, but I dropped 4 points because the Chesterfield Error really grates! It's truly unforgivable...

I do enjoy watching this movie. Kurylenko is an enjoyable actress to watch and her language skills are impressive. When she is speaking Arabic in the opening scenes her pronunciation is the best I have heard from a non-native Arab speaker. She actually 'sounds' the Arabic very well. Then of course her French is fluent, and her Russian is native, as her mother is/was Russian/Belarusian. Yes, I like her! (I've heard enough Arabic in my life and esp. On Fauda to know what spoken Arabic sounds like in both standard and dialect forms).

However, the opening scenes really let the film down from a logic perspective. For one simple reason. When the soldier is examining the boy for explosives (S -Vest) he has ignored... actually ignored... that the boy is holding an S-vest trigger in his right hand... !!!

This beggars belief! What soldier in the ME dealing with suicide bombers would not check for triggering devices in hands before examining for explosive vest?!!! It's the craziest, stupidest opening I've ever seen... but the producers evidently thought they had to do it this way for the rest of the story to unfold. Ridiculous!

I would have stopped watching the film after this bit of preposterousness...but as i might have mentioned before... I like her... so I kept ion watching, and thoroughly enjoyed the rest.

The plot holes continued. Yes the French army patrols civilian areas as an anti-terrorist operation... but to imagine she can go into private areas and trespass and order people about just like that is also ridiculous. Maybe in the ME, but not in France! Then when she goes for the final revenge, she steals enough equipment from the armoury to start a small war... then only uses one weapon sparingly... what the heck???!!!

The film takes her 'rogue' behaviour a bit too far into the unbelievable.

However, watching her taking revenge for her sisters abuse at the hands of a rogue male is very satisfying. And seeing her become shadowy after that is quite realistic. From soldier to shadow is quite a transformation.

So... worth watching as an Olga Kurylenko vehicle yes, so 6 stars... but otherwise not very well done, so only 6 stars.

OK, I love Stana Katic, and I'm not a fan of Fillion (NF). So, with Stana Katic as the clear lead in S1-6 and Castle as her advisor/sidekick, it was OK.

But then in S7-8 somehow NF insinuated himself into becoming a co-star with Stana and in throwing the spotlight on himself. Stana did not deserve this treatment, as she put all the hard work into her character, while NF simply coasted along. I increasingly liked then loved Stana, and so increasingly disliked NF. I found him smug, smarmy, self-centred, self-satisfied, and he just did coast along with minimal effort.

Yet he insisted on seeming to be a) 'heroic' which he wasn't, and b) protecting her, which she clearly did not need. As for that love/marriage story... Give Me a Break! They were Chalk and Cheese! She wouldn't have married him if he were the last man on Earth.

Thank Heavens, in 2015 she married in real life to a fellow Croat, Kris. So I'm not surprised she left the show after 2016. I'm surprised she put up with NF for that long. All the stories about them show him undermining her and trying to steal her kudos and spotlight without deserving any of it.

I tried watching S7-8 and felt ill. They were all about him, not her. They were a Mess.

So she had to deconstruct her Beckett character by doing Absentia, after Castle, and then she played in 'a Call to Spy', where she was excellent!

I won't miss Castle. The fun went out of it in 7-8 when he tried to take over, and failed miserably. He should have been content to remain her advisor/sidekick. And she should have stayed a detective. How did they make her 'Captain' without her becoming a Lieutenant first? Police are Very Hierarchical. You don't jump a rank unless you're in a silly crime-comedy that ceases to be very comedic, so they pull the stunt of jumping her a rank. Presumably to make up for him stealing the spotlight in every other way.

Goodbye, Castle, specifically (NF) and good riddance to you... This is slightly unfair to the rest of the cast, who supported her really well. Castle S1-6 still remains a decent show. Just avoid 7-8. I, for one, will not miss NF, though i will miss Stana. But the less i see of NF, the better.

I'm a Stana Katic fan...I love her in 'Castle'... But not so keen on her in 'Absentia'. I don't go in for 'heroines'... The trouble with the 'Heroine' role is that...it is patently absurd.

You have women who have no significant physique development taking on bigger, stronger and more combat-trained men, some of whom are ex military, ...and beating these men in fight scenes.

The absurdity of some of these fight scenes is beyond belief. In 'absentia', Stana Katic is quite firmly in the 'female Jason Bourne' role. Now, I've watched Jason Bourne and I enjoy that trilogy. But even there, some of the fight scenes are patently absurd, and that's between two male combatants. Jason Bourne is supposedly some super-hero with super martial arts skills, etc. It's fun to watch, but often borders on the absurd.

Stana Katic's 'female Jason Bourne' is shown doing essentially what the male Jason Bourne does, against some male opponents that are a lot bigger and stronger than she is. She is shown beating the heck out of a punch bag, but has no obvious signs of physique development. Not even athletic, though she has a very appealing feminine physique, but not built for strength or power.

Then they have her taking on both single and multiple male opponents ...and winning every time, albeit after a struggle. In real life, all it would take would be one solid left hook from a stronger male opponent, and she'd be out for the count.

But no... bang, down, bang, down, she leaves a trail of big powerful men beaten and emasculated in her wake... Why do 21C screen fights have to be quite so absurd?

This isn't 'feminism' its rank stupidity. I have no objection to women engaging in martial arts training or physique development... All strength to them! But in fight scenes this PC nonsense has gone way too far into ridiculousness. After a time you just have to go from being annoyed...to laughing at the absurdity of it all...and then not returning to it... The 21C West is diving into illusion and unreality at a rate of knots. And while in the cinematic 'old days' it used to be pretty well 'tongue in cheek'... in the cinematic PC-stupid 21C, it's done quite...seriously.

Poor *******! 😐

OK, that's my rant about 'heroines'. I was intrigued by the first 2 seasons... but I think the 3rd season lost it.

I think Stana Katic is one of the loveliest, most versatile and most watchable actresses of her generation, and she seems to have a warm and down to Earth personality.

I'm completely enthralled with 'Castle', and she gives a truly wonderful performance in 'Call to Spy'.

But Absentia is essentially too 'dark' for me, and it gets darker from season 1 to season 3. She does well in it as a performer. Very watchable. But the 'heroine' thing simply doesn't work, is way OTT, and absurd.

Like, when she is stabbed by a guy with a very long bladed knife that goes right into her, she is taken to hospital, is patched up, and told she'll recover in a week. One hour later she's up and walking out of the hospital. By the middle of the episode, she's getting about as if the wound has miraculously healed... it's just stupid!

Then in a scene in Season 3 where she is severely wounded in the hand, she goes about shooting her gun, and fighting the bad guys as if her hand is perfectly OK.

So, I give it a 5 because I like her and because the story has some merit. But the rest is truly preposterous and absurd. Sorry Stana but you could choose better roles.

Now that I've watched both series, let's start again.

Good points: Germans speak German (yes Modern German because there is next to no evidence of how German was spoken in Roman times)... Romans speak Latin. That's it.

Throughout the Germans are strong, brave hero warriors, talking loud, arguing louder, getting drunk, fighting each other...Big Strong MEN!

The Romans are weak, pathetic and incapable. Pantomime soldiers. Comic opera leaders... They just avoid singing arias... When they talk or argue, it's like Italians (who I love), but not like a Roman Army that conquered most of the then known world for a 1000 years.

The fight scenes are pathetic. The German always wins. He is the big strong beast, while the Roman is the little pantomime wimp.

Germans clever, Romans stupid. The Raid on the Thing... Of course no one thinks to put a guard around the meeting place, so the Romans get in unannounced. Then Folkwin rides in and starts killing all the Romans. There are a load of archers there, yet not one thinks to put an arrow in him. He's stronger than all of them...these tiny puny Romans.

Then the fight in the Camp. Romans stupid, Germans clever. Germans win (well of course...) Romans run away after being nasty to Germans...

For me series 2 simply said 'Germans great, Romans stupid' in every episode and every scene. It became such a cartoon propagandist parody, I had difficulty watching it until the end. But then this seems to be the way with so much 21C screen productions. Stupid fight scenes, damn the history, lets just entertain and parody. I don't think I'll bother with a 3rd series... What would be the point?

OK, as far as i could make out (my eyesight esp. For screen isn't that good...) the production values in terms of WW2 equipment were OK. Nothing cringingly out of place... exc that in the first battle scene these Germans are fighting guys in Red Army uniforms and a T34 tank... I thought this was set in Western Europe, not the Eastern Front.

However... the story is all over the place, very fragmented. Some of the dialogues are a bit 21C. 'Have a nice day'... and the way the group of British paras is made to interact would be shameful to any WW2 British paratrooper. My parents were the war gen (I'm 66) and I spent my childhood watching WW2 movies.

There is far too much 21C in some of these 're-enacted' WW2 movies. The dialogues, the way some of the actors look is nowhere near how they would have been in WW2. So, not very impressed with the writing or the directing.

Sadly the Dutch along with most EU citizens take PC for granted and it seeps into their war movies. American and Russian WW2 movies tend not to have as much. So, 4 stars for the production values re equipment, but otherwise... why did they bother? Its was the 2nd most costly Dutch film ever made. They could have done better with the same money.

I really enjoyed Bourne Supremacy. Most of it at least...

Except for the Moscow bit...which was pure nonsense.

The idea that someone could have created that much chaos in Moscow without the militia coming down hard is ridiculous. Russia isn't softy lefty-liberal Europe. Nor is it the Soviet Union any longer (surprise, surprise...!!!) However, it is tougher on law and lawbreakers. They wouldn't have chased Bourne all through Moscow. They would have blocked him and killed him. The whole chase sequence through Moscow was quite ridiculous. But then I wasn't impressed with any of the Moscow part of the movie. Anything Russian in Western movies gets messed up. Period. Stupid really.

I'm 66. I grew up with The War.

This series is a 21C take on Berlin 1945. And it looks and feels 21C.

The language is 21C. The clothing is a poor excuse for 1945 imitation. Everything about the way the people are shouts 'we're 21C trying to pretend Berlin 1945'. Mission impossible.

One scene (spoiler alert): when the Yank tries to stop 2 Soviet soldiers shooting German civilians, it looks like a scene out of a 21C crime thriller. In reality, they would have shot him and left him for dead. They both had Russian submachine guns. No one would have noticed him missing.

Then he tries to create a ;'crime scene'... Berlin is in abs ruins. There aren't any streets left or buildings, and he's trying to create a crime scene?

It doesn't make sense, doesn't ring true and really isn;t worth watching for 'historically realistic content'.

But no one has picked any of this up in any other reviews I;'ve read. Maybe GenZ/Millennials have forgotten already that nightmare, if they ever knew. No, of course they didn;t. So why make a stupid story like this? It can't be done realistically, so why do it all?

I'm being generous with 3 out of 5. Maybe I just appreciate the German angle in it. Otherwise, it's not worth anyone's time of day, unless its a rainy afternoon with nothing better to do...