nkaronis1

To be fair, the story of a lone killer who's both extremely skilled and a total sociopath lends better to the movie format than the long story.

Here there's a few things that the production got right: . Eddie Redmayne is just phenomenal and the main reason to keep watching.

. Charles Dance delivers as usual with bravado his corrupt powerful white guy role.

. Music (especially the opening song by Celeste), cinematography and generally production values are pretty good.

Now the rest of the cast is more problematic. Lashana Lynch has charisma but is horribly miscast as a modern day MI6 super agent. Same for the assassin's wife and in-laws and everybody else representing rigteousness. I don't know if the intended purpose was for the public to root for the bad guys, but that's what they achieve.

Also, the backstory with both assassin and MI6 agent having families/obligations etc.. is at best a distraction and more often just boring.

Still, it's worth viewing and I hope they will accomplish a tighter storyline in Season 2.

I give it 3 stars because of interesting cinematography and music.

Channing, Naomi and Adria do a pretty decent job too.

As for the rest, well I'm always a sucker for a good revenge movie especially if the bad guys really deserve what's coming to them.

Now, what doesn't work is the "all males are pathetic" theme: it's kind of getting old. Not a single male character in this movie shows any shred of human quality, redeeming value,smartness or charisma. The whole thing is a major bore as they forgot rule number one: the bad guys need to be interesting.

It's as if the whole movie was a project to put forward a narrative that has no resonance with most of us.

An idealized president that all Americans would be proud of?

A super hot secret agent that knows her history and is total badass?

Sacrifice and heroism from extremely capable public servants?

I mean, what's not to like here?

Given the daily spectacle provided by US politics, such movies should be prescribed by the doctor.

If some form of suspension of disbelief isn't your thing than definitely you shouldn't watch this.

Also, the music is good and photography -given a probably limited budget- is pretty pleasant.

Lastly, the duration is under 90 minutes, like back in the old days when directors didn't indulge into 3h yawns.