*The following is an advance spoiler free review of the first three episodes of the Prime Video series Citadel.*
If there’s one tried and true genre of action flicks, it’s the spy movie. Over the decades, many super spies have made their mark on the big screen, with names like James Bond, Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne now household action stars. The challenge facing anyone trying to write a spy story is, how do you do something new with one of the most profitable genres of cinema?
If you’re hoping that Prime Video’s new mega-budget spy series, Citadel, will answer that question, you will probably be disappointed. Despite the high pedigree of writers and producers behind it, including Anthony and Joe Russo of “Avengers: Infinity War” fame, Citadel‘s refusal to reinvent the wheel and satisfaction with coasting on the coattails of other spy tropes before it works against it, leaving behind a husk of ideas that have been executed far better in the past.
The secret agency known as, you guessed it, Citadel is working beyond the authority of all other agencies on the planet to prevent major terrorist disasters- hold on for this: The pilot claims that they’re behind the collapse of the Berlin Wall AND preventing Y2K. Citadel’s top agents are Mason Kane (Richard Madden, with the most inconsistent American accent since Sam Worthington in “Avatar”) and Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas, “The Matrix Resurrections”), until an ambush on a routine mission leaves them in a river with selective memory loss- remind you of anyone?- and all other Citadel agents murdered in cold blood.
Years later, Mason is abducted by Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci, “The Devil Wears Prada”), his and Nadia’s handler, who informs him of his past and calls on him to track down a briefcase containing the codes for every nuclear weapon on Earth, which has fallen into the hands of a shady sleeper cell known as Manticore.
As you can probably gather from that synopsis, Citadel is basically every spy movie plot ever written smashed into one- seriously, what is it with Hollywood’s obsession with potential nuclear war? With a pilot written by Josh Applebaum, writer of one of the best spy movies ever made in “Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol,” and Jeff Pinkner of “Fringe” fame, among others, the fact that the series has this much repetition and an overall derivative nature is kind of remarkable and not in a good way. Especially given that these writers have contributed to the genre that they’re trying to repackage.
Plot twists are telegraphed miles in advance, subtracting any trace of surprise from the series- if you think you’ve got it figured out, chances are, you’re right. Even the big twists that are supposed to drop jaws end up being dull and astonishingly derivative, and when a spy series can’t even surprise you, that’s a very, very bad sign. The only true shock of the show is that the threat of nuclear war is coming from, of all places, Great Britain for… reasons?
But viewers could probably forgive the familiarity if the presentation is slick, right? That’s where Citadel really drops the ball. Newton Thomas Sigel, who directed and shot the pilot after filming numerous “X-Men” films, pulls tricks from very bad influences here, constantly spinning the camera one hundred and eighty degrees for no reason other than to dizzy the audience. Not to mention the near constant cutting to black to end virtually every scene, which actually made me audibly angry after the third time it was used. If you want viewers to tune into your show, why keep cutting everything off???
Madden and Jonas are clearly trying their best with the material and their early banter is a highlight- not to mention that both fit the super spy profile to a T- and they’re the best reason to watch the show, which the marketing seems to know, proudly displaying them front and center. Tucci, unfortunately comes off bad here, essentially playing the same apathetic calm he did in 2003’s “The Core,” which makes Bernard rather uninteresting to watch.
Citadel is probably one of the most disappointing mega-budget shows to hit a major streaming service in a long time. It’s already been renewed for a second season, so it doesn’t really matter, but based on the first three episodes, it’s got a long ways to go before Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh join the ranks of great secret agents.
Citadel streams on Prime Video on April 28.