Cinema-Review

The series fails to ignite and is trapped by a style left wanting and shallow execution. It begs for a 1970s look yet feigns authenticity with a right-of-the-rack shine and cleanliness.

Set against the dusty backdrop of the 1970s Southwest, the story arrives with a heavy dose of period aesthetics and a premise ripe for pulpy thrills. However, despite its visual flair and commitment to recreating the era, the series quickly becomes bogged down by a pervasive sense of style over substance, leaving viewers with a production that feels disappointingly thin.

The characters, from the seemingly heroic criminal getaway driver to the determined FBI agent and various nefarious figures, often feel broadly sketched, akin to cartoonish archetypes rather than complex individuals. Their motivations frequently appear underdeveloped, and the dialogue, at times forced, contributes to a sense that this is "pulp disguised as prestige" - heavy on dramatic posturing but light on genuine authenticity.

The series also struggles to find a consistent tonal balance. While seemingly aiming for a fun, Tarantino-esque energy, attempts at heightened reality or humor, such as a jarringly executed Roadrunner cartoon homage or overly silly scenarios, can miss the mark and feel out of place. The effort to inject excitement occasionally comes across as trying way too hard to force the sense of fun it should just naturally possess, resulting in an uneven viewing experience.

Furthermore, the writing often relies heavily on clichés, offering little in the crime genre that feels fresh or unexpected. Even potentially compelling elements, such as the storyline following the first Black female FBI agent in the 1970s, are noted as feeling undercooked and lacking the impactful exploration they warrant. This FBI narrative, in particular, is cited as less engaging than other parts of the show, dragging its feet and lacking crucial subtext.

Casting choices have also drawn scrutiny, with the age difference between lead actor Josh Holloway and the character he portrays (a Vietnam veteran) highlighted as a distracting element that can undermine the show's attempts at dramatic weight. Adding to the show's struggles is an excessive reliance on 1970s nostalgia, from constant music needle drops to overall aesthetic choices, which some found to be unearned and dictated by a lack of common sense. While the main cast generally performs admirably, the supporting performance from Keith David is exceptional.

Ultimately, the show promises a wild ride, but often spins its wheels, hindered by shallow writing, inconsistent tone, and a prioritization of surface-level style over the substantive development needed to make its world and characters truly compelling.

The film courts comparisons to an earlier, less computer-generated era of special and visual effects, stoking audiences' apparently bottomless nostalgia for the '80s glory days of animatronics, matte paintings, and kids meeting little creatures à la E.T. el extraterrestre (1982) and Gremlins (1984).

An opening bird's-eye-view introduces us to the imaginary island of Carpathia, a mountainous mishmash of Central and Eastern Europe that sits somewhere "in the Black Sea"-a mossy, foggy, muddy Euro-nowhere where little funky-looking cars careen along bumpy roads, radios blare dated foreign pop, and mustachioed men in undershirts sit under bare bulbs, sternly eating soup. The geography is whimsical, and the signage is in a jumble of different languages or alphabets (or English, when it's important to the story).

Carpathia has a problem with monsters: the Ochi of the title, who resemble apes with beady eyes, big ears, blue skin, and reddish fur. They live in the woods, eat livestock, and communicate in strange chirps. The task of culling these strange creatures has, for murky reasons, fallen on a group of children, mostly boys, under the command of Maxim, a semi-deranged Ochi-tracker who struts around in fatigues and a costume-shop Roman helmet. Armed with old-fashioned muskets, homemade traps, and some kind of radar gizmo, he and the boys venture into the forest at night to hunt the Ochi, though it appears that they are yet to bag one of the elusive beasts. All of this is introduced mostly through the eyes of Maxim's young daughter, Yuri, who has recently become old enough to join the nightly Ochi hunt.

Predictably, Yuri and a little Ochi depart on a journey of their own, but there's no real shape to their journey, no unexpected pitfalls or subplots or surprises; even a rambunctious interlude in a modern-day supermarket feels curiously predetermined. The cursory plot feels like it's been assembled from generic pieces of other fairy tales and myths.

Ideas of character seem too rarefied for what should be a simple, evocative and visceral tale. The father, lost in his loveless gloom and living in a world of hard, martial surfaces, spends his time listening to brooding Russian chants. The mother, whose home seems nurturing and filled with plants, listens to Italian pop songs. If we catch these contrasts, they will presumably inform these characters' psychologies and maybe even fill in the details of why they couldn't live together, and why the quiet, conflicted Yuri is the way she is. But this sort of shading only really works if there's already some weight to the characters. Here, they remain paper thin, empty avatars waiting for someone (a screenwriter, a director, an actor, somebody) to fill them with life.

For all the visual vividness, we have very little actual sense of this land, or the people who live there. The film looks amazingly, impressively real, but it's populated by non-characters pursuing a nothing story. Yet for all of its imaginative inspirations, it feels under-conceptualized: It's a fairytale without much stirring under the studiously designed surface.

The filmmaker proves to be too earnest to subvert the formulaic adventure story and family dynamics. He never seems to get a handle on the kind of fuzzy, gooey sentimental feelings on which said formulaic adventure and family dynamics depend for resolution purposes. Nonetheless, there's something to be said for a movie that aspires to a sense of wonder in an age of stultifying digital possibility-even if the only emotion it ends up inspiring is an appreciation for the fakery involved.

Sequel logic typically dictates doubling down on what worked the first time around, but there are exceptions. This time out our main character is too busy line dancing, motorcycling, and firing semiautomatic weapons to worry about percentages and deductions. Gone are the simpler times when he would do some farmer couple's taxes in between amortizing someone's mortality. The film has all but discarded its basic premise and just wants to shoot as many people in the head as possible.

The idea of our accountant as a righteous, larger-than-life crusader is made explicit. Having seemingly cut ties with the organized criminals who previously exploited his skill set-while steadily liquidating their ill-gotten gains-he's a free agent, which means speed dating and eating endearingly symmetrical breakfasts in his beloved Airstream while waiting for his Treasury Department handlers to activate him for assignments.

The plot is a mess, the mystery is mud, and the star is mediocre (as usual). It's easy to forget what this movie is a sequel to as one's eyes glaze over. The outrageous plot points proliferate, one after the other, until an entire television season's worth of narrative information has been compressed into two hectic and occasionally funny hours.

The film doubles down on its dual convictions. One, that watching someone with autism talk to someone without autism is inherently funny, and two, that nobody should mock autism because autism allows you to be the most laudable thing an American blockbuster can imagine: a supersoldier. This is to say that the film does not handle the many facets of neurodiversity delicately. The film is an imbalanced balance sheet in serious need of reconciliation.