DMZ (Zona desmilitarizada)

Future dystopia, action, Rosario Dawson - what is not to like? A broken post-war place where everybody is cheery, clean, well dressed and well fed. The camera work is sunny and bright, wardrobe colourful. No broken people. The action involves sitting around talking, moves on to some discussion and finishes with some dialogue. Dawson is given a hopeless script and does as well as anyone could.

There has been a second American Civil War and Manhattan is declared a demilitarized zone. Alma Ortego (Rosario Dawson) is a medic desperately searching for her missing son. She gets into the crosshairs of warlord Parco Delgado (Benjamin Bratt).

The pilot holds some intrigue as it reveals this world. I was hoping for more but it still promises certain things. When she escapes into the DMZ, the pursuing soldiers claim that she wouldn't survive long. It suggests a scary dystopian world of unimaginable horrors. What it turns out to be is a mix of The Warriors and Gotham without Batman. Episode three ends with the comic book charge by two sides in a melee. It's all very poor comic book and it does not surprise me to find that this is based on a comic book series. This is no Escape from New York. This show has a promising start and then it evaporates. I can't even finish the fourth episode.

I barely made it through the first episode.

My opinion is that it's not gritty enough for the setting that it proposes and story isn't very compelling. I had higher hopes for an HBO production. They should have put the money for this into more seasons of Raised by Wolves. :P.

If you're a purist of the comic, this is definitely not for you. If you separate it from that, it's still not that great of a show. No particular actor or actress steps out to steal the spotlight. The directing of the first episode is horrible and jumps around too much to allow the viewer to understand what is happening. It gets marginally.better but it's been done before and done better.

Despite some interesting visuals and good acting, this show is just not compelling! :-( The first episode could barely keep my interest :-( What a waste of Rosario Dawson's talent :-(