La Fortuna

My Review - La Fortuna Streaming on SBS on Demand My Rating 7.5 /10

I really enjoyed La Fortuna a Spanish/American 6 part series written and Directed by Alejandro Amenábar who also has directed or written movies like Vanilla Sky the Sea Inside and The Others which I also enjoyed .

Produced by Movistar+ in Europe, La Fortuna is a contemporary adventure Pirate and treasure hunt tale with film locations in Spain in near Madrid and Atlanta in the U. S. A.

One of the only 2 actors who were familiar to me in this series was Stanley Tucci who always delivers and is terrific in the role of Frank Wild an underwater salvage millionaire who discovers the long lost wreck of a Spanish Ship La Fortuna off the coast of Spain near Gibraltar that was sunk by The British in 1805 .

Frank Wild and his team plunder the treasure and disturb the remains of the La Fortuna wreck to recover it's valuable bounty of thousands of Spanish gold coins and artefacts .

They of course claim ownership for Frank Wild's company Atlantis and return with the treasure to the United States.

The only other actor familiar to me in La Fortuna was Clarke Peters who plays Jonas Pierce an attorney who takes on the task on behalf of the Spanish Government Department of Culture to reclaim the treasure and return it to the country that La Fortuna was returning to before it was sunk losing its 200 passengers and crew as well as its cargo .

The rest of the cast are predominantly Spanish and all give terrific performances including two very charismatic young Spanish actors Álvaro Mel who plays Alex Ventura and Ana Polvorosa who stars as Alex Ventura's colleague and eventual romantic interest and fellow adventurer Lucia Vallarta.

Álvaro Mel I've since found out is a 26 year old Spanish Instagram Star, YouTube Star, Social Media Star, Fashion Influencer, Model & Television Actor and a very impressive actor that I'll watch out for in future movies.

Ana Polvorosa, is a Spanish film, theatre and television actress and she also impressed me greatly in her role as Lucia Vallarta a Public Servant assigned to assist Alex Ventura navigate the American Legal system in obtaining the treasure out of the hands of Frank Wilde and back to Spain.

Together both Alex and Lucia gradually become the prominent characters in the show because of their vitally important career assignment to travel together to the USA and assist in the retrieval of the treasure from La Fortuna and of course they form a deep emotional attachment for each other in spite of their many differences.

Alex is a young and inexperienced diplomat, who inadvertently becomes the leader of the mission to recover the undersea treasure stolen by adventurer Frank Wild.

Lucia is his more mature radical outspoken and attractive colleague who at first clashes with Alex's clean cut suit and tie conservative style.

All the ensemble cast are impressive in this series La Fortuna and I would have given it an 8 if the conclusion was better .

In my view it did get a little frantic and seemed to go unnecessarily off course in the last episode but all in all a great viewing experience.

We never read the graphic novel, so we came to this series with no preconceived notions. The story is compelling and the cast is superb: Stanley Tucci, Clarke Peters, Ana Polvorosa, Álvaro Mel, T'nia Miller quickly create full characters.

Art direction is superb. The locations for Jonás Pierce's home, along with locations in Madrid, those government buildings!, gave the series a real grounding. I believe it was all shot in Spain.

I've read the other reviews and horrified at the American xenophobia and racism. Talk about overloading context! Ignore these fools - watch for yourself. It's a good tale, love the multicultural cast and storyline.

Well, some of the reviews for this are laughable and borderline racist. The Brits and the Yanks decry it as a pathetic pack of lies, insulting their national pride, while the rest see it as a decent bit of entertainment, based on a comic book.

The facts of the period are indisputable: the British, as they had been for 300 years, treated the oceans as their own private kingdom, seizing ships or sinking them on their whim. This is historical FACT, whether the Brits like it or not.

What is also historical fact is that a number of modern-day US 'pirates' roam the oceans looking for such buried treasure and then a way to keep it for their own enrichment, ignoring the history and nationality of the treasure concerned.

This series sets up a nice battle between the good (the Spanish) and the bad (the Yanks/Brits). It's quite entertaining and the production is good, especially the historical scenes when we see how La Fortuna was sunk.

Make up your own mind and ignore the screaming reviews.

"La Cultura es nuestro petróleo." Culture is our oil (meaning as a natural resource).

Written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar adapted from the graphic novel, El tesoro del Cisne Negro by Guillermo Corral and Paco Roca. This was my first graphic novel and I have to say that as a novel, it's stupid, but as the basis for a movie, it's brilliant. Amenábar must have thought he hit the lottery with this as it's like someone already story-boarded the entire series for him.

The negative reviews here seem to be from people taking offense that there are some jabs taken at the USA. I'm American, but I'm also very thick-skinned and not easily insulted. I always say the same thing, any America who thinks that they rest of the world has to think we are the greatest is being a child, and the rest of the world has to realize that as the leading power in the world, there have been much worse in history than the USA.

Back to La Fortuna. This is one of the best, if not THE best Spanish series that I have seen. It definitely has the best acting, and for good and bad acting, I always put the blame or the praise on the director. It is the director's project, so if someone gives a bad performance, that's on the director. Chapeau to Amenábar.

Good acting by the three main English speaking cast, and Ana Polvorosa has her moments... But the plot is quite bad, full of clichés, cheaply nationalistic/nostalgic at times (and I'm from Spain) and, well, boring, predictable and flat, really. A waste of resources is what I think all the time while I watch.