I didn't like how the media jumped all over this to label it a "non woke" series since it is a military-oriented series but things are crazy enough over at the likes of Netflix that I guess I can understand why they would say that. Netflix would find a way to fit social issues into just about anything so a profound military series wouldn't be safe from that sort of thing.
I'm kind of glad the media attention was put on this series, even if it was for the wrong, and very political reasons because I might not have known about it otherwise since it streams on a service that I don't pay much attention to: Amazon Prime.
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I'm going to try my best to avoid spoilers in this writeup but if you enjoy going into a series or movie totally "cold and uninformed" you can just know that I recommend this series highly and I burned through all the episodes pretty rapidly.
It centers around James Reece who is played by Chris Pratt and this is probably where the accusations of it being a right-wing production comes from since Pratt is conservative and we all know that this can only mean that he is a right-wing operative in the eyes of the media.
James Reece is a commander in a group of soldiers that goes on a botched covert mission in, I think it was Syria. It doesn't really matter since most of the story and the "war" takes place on US soil. The rest of the series is about how he seeks answers from his superiors and unravels corruption on the highest level in the government and the military. It is kind of a John Wick type experience in that Reece is a one-man army with a ton of experience and resources at his disposal and even though some of the scenarios he gets himself into are pretty impractical if not impossible, they are at the same time very entertaining.
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Even though this is totally a work of fiction, it does make you think a bit about your own data privacy and Reece seems overly paranoid at first to anyone who is outside his core group, but they quickly start to realize that he is correct and that if the government wants to track you, they have the ability to do so if you use all the commercially available apps that are seemingly pushed upon us in modern society. I'm not saying that everyone should delete all of their social media immediately, but it is a bit of an eye opener and made me think about how all of these "free" apps that we use, they have to make money somehow so if they are not selling us anything, we must be the product.
The acting is pretty top-drawer on all accounts. I can't think of a single bad actor in the entire series and this is a big plus. They also clearly had a very big budget to make this because there are plenty of wartime scenes and explosions that would have cost a pretty penny and none of them seem fake at all. Something like fake CGI explosions is something that for me and many other folks can be a deal-breaker as far as a story is concerned and I was happy to see that this never happened. Everything seems real.
I also appreciated the fact that the story featured a lot of moving back and forth in time including a lot of flashbacks to kind of fill in the gaps in the story yet at the same time the way things are moving keeps you guessing about what will happen next.
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The above scene, and many others like it looked real and I wonder if it actually was. They would have had to close down a large portion of a seemingly busy downtown street so perhaps it was just a nicely recreated lot. Perhaps the buildings are CGI but the streets and close to the action stuff is real. I don't know how shows are made :)
Some aspects of the show are a bit unbelievable such as the fact that Pratt seems to have relatively unlimited access to tech and explosives despite being on the run from authorities. Suspend your disbelief for a little while and just go along for the ride. This series, like many other series and films have rather outlandish ideas for how the hero gets their weaponry and this is just something that we have to accept in order to enjoy the ride.
Should I watch it?
If you enjoy action with a big budget behind it that isn't a cookie-cutter replica of so many other stories out there, I think The Terminal List will be something you can enjoy. It isn't just a "shoot em up" either. There is plenty of emotion and really good dramatic performances in this series as well and a lot of it might hit you right in the feels. I was never bored watching all of this series and I think that most people will probably feel the same way. It wasn't what I expected for the most part and little of it was predictable. Some of it was over-the-top but I think we can all kind of expect that in action films and series at this point.
This is NOT on Netflix. It is on Amazon Prime and of course, a plethora of torrent sites.
