DMZ

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.

The acting is OK. No stand-out performances, but none too terrible. The twists and character arcs are predictable.

Instead of focusing on the effects of civil war, it's a run-of-the-mill turf war that borders on racist stereotypes of gang communities. There's an election too, although the candidates are all violent kingpins preaching about unity while murdering dissidents, so it's difficult to really care.

Tonally it's a mess. In one scene the DMZ is portrayed as ruins torn apart by a decade of war, and in a subsequent scene you have vivid yellow colour grading and twenty-somethings barbecuing and drinking out of mason jars like it's Glastonbury festival. Everyone is clean, well-dressed, and happy. I really admire the costume design, but it's more suited to a catwalk than a war zone.

There's a very tone-deaf moment early on where Ortega is smiling in a happy hipster marketplace, chuckling over "people at their worst" - as if civil war isn't so bad as long as you can drink home brew at the vintage fair. Ten seconds later we're in a clinic watching a teen cough blood.

The cinematography is all over the place. A particularly heavy-handed shot is filmed upside down, because "Ortega's world has been turned upside down" and the only way to show this was by making viewers stand on their heads. The words "I don't want to be reminded" are scribbled on the wall of her old apartment building. My, how symbolic. Several close-up shots of a character's hands, and dialogue is repeated just in case you didn't realise it was important the first three times.

There's an almost comical over-reliance on lens flares, shaky-cam, and focus pulls. Action scenes are a blurry, jumpy mess of dutch angles. Each line of dialogue has its own shot, sometimes two. There's never more than a few seconds to focus on a character's emotions or reactions before cutting away.

And of course, there are plenty of inaccuracies and continuity errors. Little things like wounds requiring major surgery are miraculously healed with just some stitches and kind words. Dates on ID badges, Ortega's son's height chart, in dialogue and in promotional material don't quite add up. A gubernatorial election is held, glossing over issues like which federal union the governor belongs to. It just feels lazy.

Because, you know, there's a civil war. Apparently that's supposed to affect things.

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.

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.

After seeing 25% of the series I realized there's better shows on the many watch lists of the multiple streaming services that I use. If I keep adding to those lists I'll probably never be able to get through half the content! I found nothing about episode 1 to make me want to watch episodes 2, 3 or 4. And because of that fans of this show are likely to label me, or anyone else for that matter, who rated DMZ below a 6 as a hater. I don't hate the series, it's just not worth my time. Just goes to show you how feeble minded telivision can make the masses.