Chris Pratt returns to the world of series for Prime Video by taking the helm of The Terminal List, an action thriller full of unfulfilled promises.
Before becoming the star of big franchises in cinema, like Jurassic World: the world after, currently in theaters, Chris Pratt cut his teeth in the series Parks and Recreation. So there was a little homecoming side to see him land on the poster for The Terminal List, a series in eight episodes of about an hour, for Prime Video.
He plays James Reece, a Navy Seal whose unit is decimated during an operation. Traumatized, he will realize that the truth he is being told does not coincide with reality. There follows a quest for revenge that will uncover a gigantic plot.
Check out The Terminal List on Prime Video
Rechewed series
If you’ve ever scoured Amazon’s productions catalog for its streaming service and taken a look at both seasons of Jack Ryan, the first season of Reacher, and the movie Without Remorse, then you’ve just won eight hours of your time. The Terminal List is just a potpourri of other platform babies and a bunch of works like it.
Certainly, we did not expect the show to renew or transcend the action thriller, but we at least hoped that with such a format, we were offered something that was a bit off the beaten track. It is not so. The Terminal List follows the lesser of these paths and makes no effort to surprise us. We constantly guess everything, especially since the script does not even try to disguise its intentions. By his admission, creator David DiGilio wanted to sign a cinematic series and in a way he succeeded. We actually have the impression of watching a film that lasts 6 hours too long.
However, everything started off pretty well. Antoine Fuqua, behind the camera of the first episode, was the guarantee of efficiency and as such, the first action scene meets the quality requirements. From there, the show begins to explore an interesting trail on paranoia and post-traumatic stress. Conspiracy? No conspiracy? The series seemed to want to explore the psyche of the soldier by throwing us elements free of interpretation.
Interesting leads that won’t even make it to the end of the first episode. Why bother to make it complicated or original when you can go to the simplest: everyone is rotten, you have to kill them all. Each episode will thus highlight a target from James Reece’s list and the only creativity of the series will come from the man’s ability to stage his actions.
War is fantastic
Acts of revenge that would also have been interesting to discuss within a scenario focusing on the violence by firearms that still shakes the United States, by the treatment reserved for its soldiers returning from operations or by any other social issue. In short, enough to offer at least a little consistency during these eight hours (sorry, we insist, but we still have trouble digesting the uselessness of this duration). Except that The Terminal List never puts in default the mission of Reece, eternal kind of history that everyone wants to help, at one time or another.
A hero without thickness, played by a monolithic Chris Pratt, whom the series tries to humanize through the use of untimely and above all repetitive flashbacks, one of them being reused at least half a dozen times. The trauma does not nuance the character, it serves more to justify his quest. A justification that comes up every time he doesn’t shoot someone, just to fill in the holes and give a booster shot for those who missed the 3698 previous injections.
As for the casting of second knives, however solid with the presence in particular of Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), Taylor Kitsch (True Detective), Riley Keough (Mad Max: Fury Road) or Jai Courtney (Suicide Squad), it does not exists only to serve as foil. A use so cynical that the real surprise will come from the capacity of the scenario to use it not as characters, but as functions. They are not written, they are placed there until they are no longer needed.
Everything seems so superficial, as if to save time. Difficult therefore to get involved in anything within The Terminal List. From Chris Pratt’s squabble to a plot where the protagonists don’t stay alive long enough for us to really understand what’s at stake, we’re just waiting for the final outcome so we can move on. The list was long…
Check out The Terminal List on Prime Video
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