Cast: Priyanka Chopra, Richard Madden, Stanley Tucci
Director: Newton Thomas Sigel
Rating: Three stars (out of 5)
A superfast train hurtles across the Italian Alps. Two elite spies trained to tame warmongers are on a mission. On the train is a Russian agent in possession of a bag that contains highly enriched uranium. An all-out clash ensues. One false move could spell big trouble for the pair. It does.
The train and what happens on - and to - it sums up Citadel to perfection. It is going to be all or nothing. It helps that the leads plunge headlong into the action and come up trumps. Priyanka Chopra, all spunk and flair, hits the ground running. As does Richard Madden, striking a balance between understated virility and sustained gentility.
The tense, exciting and explosive start helps Citadel, out on Amazon Prime Video, demonstrate exactly what it is about. It may, to a great extent, be old wine in a new bottle, but the show's ambition and scale are instantly impressive.
Its intentions are on full display from the outset. The two initial episodes combine quick introductory character expositions with high-jinks, fast-paced, sweeping action. It is apparent that pulling out the stops will come easy to this spy thriller, notwithstanding the genre limitations that it will have to contend with no matter what it pulls out of the bag.
How far Citadel will eventually go will hinge on how much of a departure it makes from the conventions of genre-defining spy actioners with which comparisons would be inevitable (the likes of Mission Impossible, the Bourne franchise, Joe and Anthony Russo's The Gray Man). On the face of it, it has the potential to go the distance on its own terms.
The frenetic pace, the crackling energy, the impressive stunts and the sly cat-and-mouse banter that injects wit into suspenseful situations blend seamlessly in the opening moments. They set the stage. The train goes off the rails. The show doesn't.
The thing about myths, says one of the train passengers, is that "at the end of the day they are all stories, fallacies, lies..." And the thing about stories is that they can trigger any number of myths and that is what Citadel appears to be keen to make the most of. The possibilities are immense.
Erased memories, closely-guarded secrets, merging of missions, lies buried, and remembrances of collective battles form the basis of the Citadel plot. It has ample room for mythification and expansion as the series goes scouring the world in search of new and diverse adventures.
For Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra) and Mason Kane (Richard Madden), the train ride would have been all in a day's work but for the way it ends - in a derailment, a life-threatening conflagration and a snapping point for the star spies as well as the agency they serve. The wounds that Nadia and Mason suffer are much more than skin deep.
The remaining four episodes of the series created by David Weil and executive produced by the Russo brothers will drop on four successive Fridays in May. If the story so far is anything to go by, the rest of the season - and the subsequent ones (Citadel has been renewed for a second season) - would be worth the wait.
Citadel has veteran American actor Stanley Tucci, frequent Mike Leigh collaborator Lesley Manville and the Danish star Roland Moller in key roles. They all play roles with intriguing angularities that range from the wily to the wicked. "I am extremely untrustworthy. I am a spy," says Tucci's character to the male protagonist. Well, that is indeed the name of the game.
Director Newton Thomas Sigel (who also doubles up as one of the cinematographers), knows what is at stake and he does not ever take the foot off the gas. The best thing about Citadel is that despite the dizzying momentum, the storytelling does not feel breathless.
Amid the frenzy that it whips up, the emotional core predicated on personal and familial ties cemented amid adversity gives the tale a certain degree of depth and solidity.
The prelude that leads us into the story of Nadia and Mason, who are Citadel's best spies individually and as a team, depicts a flashpoint that marks the fall of the network, a global and independent organisation of secret agents that has worked away from the glare of the spotlight for decades for the safety and security of all mankind irrespective of geographies and allegiances.
The memories of the two elite spies are wiped clean and the future of the world falls into the hands of Manticore, a ruthless syndicate of criminal arms-dealing families run by the British ambassador to the US, Dahlia Archer (Manville). Dahlia's right-hand men are the terrible twins Anders and Davik Silje (played by Moller). They have the Citadel X-Case that holds loads of classified information and technology that could mean the difference between the revival of the spy agency and its total annihilation.
It is now up to Bernard Orlick (Tucci), Citadel's technology whiz, to retrieve and protect what is left of the agency's assets. He inevitably turns to Mason, who, in turn, is goes looking for Nadia. That entails a trans-Atlantic trip fraught with danger - and hope.
It is eight years on. Mason, with a new name and identity, lives with his wife Abby (Ashleigh Cummings) and daughter Hendrix (Caoilinn Springall). He has no memory. He is desperate to know who he is because Hendrix wants to hear stories of her dad's past.
Visions of a woman disturbs Mason. If I can find out who she is, I might find out who I am, he says to his therapist. The search sets the man - and his one-time trusted partner - on a collision course with Manticore, which is out to push the world over the edge.
The jigsaw pieces are familiar and the action tropes are anything but original, but Citadel is an edifice that is tall and solid enough not to crumble in a hurry under the weight of expectations. There is more to the show than Priyanka Chopra. Who's complaining?
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