chris_mclean-60431

This is a truly terrible movie. The acting is extremely wooden - if they'd employed high school drama students they would have done a better job. The plot was nothing but western action movie cliches, strung together one after the other, without any development of tension. The only point of the movie seemed to be to see if Ivan Turchin can be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the answer is - No, he can't. While Arnie was wooden at times, he always appeared to have a sense of humor bubbling away in the background. This movie takes itself totally seriously, and it's so bad it isn't even funny.

I really wanted to like this series and it sounded exactly like the kind of show that I like. Unfortunately I made it through one and a half episodes before giving up. The acting is extremely wooden and the script sounds like it was created from a check list of cool things to put in a murder mystery set in France. This British habit of setting shows in France and populating them with British actors with a variety of regional British accents, and pretending that it is French, is extremely irritating and bordering on disrespectful. It feels like an aspect of British cultural superiority, marked by the refusal to learn other languages and act as if all you need to do is shout loudly enough in English for people to understand you. And if they don't, it's their fault! Plonking a lot of English actors in beautiful French locations, and then throwing in the odd French word every now and again - such as "Maman" instead of "mummy" - is not only unconvincing, it's downright absurd. Overall, a big fail from me.