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The review title says it all, pretty much. I give Netflix credit. This series based on solid research, including credible witnesses, and as far as CGI and animation, illustrates reported and corroborated facts well enough, but not gratuitously. Take it for what it is -- educational and journalistic storytelling -- and it's better than most.

Rarely are protagonist and antagonist so well cast, and also so well-scripted and directed as in this Michael Mann masterpiece. The action is taut, almost understated, never quite gratuitous although the accident sequence is a bit of a stretch in that regard. Cruise wields his character with chilling intensity, exuding almost a superhuman level of control. Unwitting hero Foxx chips away at him, cluelessly and then relentlessly. The soundtrack is first-rate, a host of well-selected, edgy tunes to savor. Climactic night club scene is maybe the very best of its kind ever filmed.

Overall this series is chock full of compelling images, memorable dialogue and talented cast. It is a bleak reminder of what lies in store for human beings if they succeed in colonizing and exploiting other planets in the solar system for industrial materials, as Elon Musk and so many others fantasize, without also mananging to learn from their own recent history: war, environmental destruction, and subjugation of the human spirit by the engines of industry. The series plot offsets this bleak, almost unavoidable conclusion with Christian themes and a character or two that struggle impotently to tame the massive juggernaut of the military-industrial complex. Nevertheless there is scarcely a ray of hope to be found in the first three seasons. The depiction of "protomolecule" technology to produce hybrid human "supersoldiers", albeit a cheesy, old-school special-effects gag theme and a boring reiteration of a theme from the Star Wars 'clones' episode, is truly creepy and unsettling.