Reviews

This show has a lot going for it: great actors, interesting settings, intriguing historical type mystery. I watched in fascination as the secrets slowly became revealed, and the tension built and built through the ten episodes. And as the story was coming to its powerful conclusion... it suddenly died with a puff of dust and a splash of water. What the heck happened? For almost eight episodes the story got better and better. Why did the writers destroy it all in the last 2 or 3 episodes? Some examples...

Major Spoilers ahead.

Debbie (Lauren Ambrose) is a hard-life girl who finds some redemption for her bad choices, in protecting and trying to save Josh (Zen McGrath) the young messiah-in-training. She rescues him from his desert confines more than once, and the young guy helps her in their escapes, and the two of them have a certain connection together from their shared experiences. But in a twist as the story nears its climax, the good guy Josh ends up being the bad guy, and kills the hero Debbie without a struggle, and the hero dies a useless death. One quick and gurgling neck slashing, thus dies the hero.

Peter (Jason Isaacs) is a hard-life FBI agent, who finds some solace over his daughter's death when he meets Emma (Alison Sudol) a smart and somewhat innocent young woman, who he helps keep safe after her abduction, and as he wrestles with their mutual attraction to each other. He also finds a good friend in his antagonist partner Golan (Ori Pfeffer) who gives him unexpected support as they encounter numerous dangers while they protect Emma and piece together the answers to multiple mysteries. But in a twist as the story reaches its climax, the good guy Emma ends up being the bad guy, and kills the hero Golan without a struggle, and the hero dies a useless death. One quick and gurgling neck slashing, thus dies the hero.

Seriously? These are two different story lines in two different countries, and both of the rescued victims end up slashing the necks of their saviors, killing two of the main heroes right before the end.

The last few episodes have other issues that greatly weakened the story's ending. Let's see...

There was the young shy guy Avram who is the first character we get to know in the whole series and we follow him in each episode, which puts a huge importance on him as a character. But at the end his character doesn't make much sense. In his desire to protect the calf he can apparently justify killing a priest or the young boy Josh, all to keep them from killing the calf. But then he doesn't have to, and at the climax, just as the calf is to be sacrificed, he has no difficulty at all in simply walking away with the calf, when the surrounding crowds of people are magically distracted by a distant explosion. No conflict, no drama. Just walk away quietly and bring the calf to a far off farm to live out its life in peace.

And the exploding dam that was to flood big swaths of the city. It starts to crack, we see some gushing water in one small underground shaft, but that's it. And then shortly later, in the emergency drainage tunnels that were presumably being pounded with torrents of water, those tunnels are now somehow only damp and there is no water to be seen. What, did the big lake and river behind the dam completely drain in five minutes? Never mind that Emma and the archaeologist somehow survived being in those same drainage tunnels.

And then we find out that sweet smart Emma was apparently the mastermind behind much of what happened at the end. She was avenging the death of her family by the archaeologist, and did all this to maneuver him into just the right place so that she could kill him. Never mind that she'd been working with him, and even sleeping with him, for months. And never mind that she wasn't shown as being at all psycho during any of the other episodes, but at the very end she was. And though she was avenging the death of her family, she had no qualms about killing Golan, who she knew was a father in his own family.

And a quick shout-out to the big bad preacher man who dies a long lingering death from choking on a cashew. A cashew!

For the first seven episodes I'd give an average of 8 stars. But the last few episodes totally destroyed the story and many of the most important characters. A twist is only a twist if it was at least somewhat foreshadowed. Otherwise its just making stuff up. And after a full season of buildup you can't avert Armageddon by letting the calf loose in a sunny meadow.

On the plus side, the acting was good, and the film created some lovely moods within a number of scenes, though these were mostly cut short just when getting good.

On the minus side, the story-telling was disjointed for no apparent artistic purpose, and spent too much time on details that didn't add to the story, and not enough time on details that would. The two main characters seemed to have much more to say. They expressed much love for each other at various times, yet we barely get to see where this love comes from, or why they are endlessly drawn to each other. So much potential wasted here -- tell us more about them! 

Taken on its own, this film is a moderate romantic drama, giving us small slices of life, and nicely detailed. Taken as a gay romance, however, I have to say *ugh*. Why must so many gay romance films end with the love interest dying? Or end with one character realizing they're unable to express that part of themselves? This film came perilously close to fulfilling both of these, instead of just one.

It would be wonderful if gay romances could end on a positive note more often. This is so infrequent in this genre that its as if displaying such a positive ending would be somehow unrealistic. And maybe this is an indication of how a gay romance is perceived in our current world. I look forward to a time when gay romance can be something happy and expected.

I'm fine with brainless action movies, as long as they entertain in some way, like with a fun romp or a tense chase. But this movie fails to entertain, it has no drive, no story, and no spark. Even the effects scenes, while technically well done, somehow don't add much. They rarely amaze, and there's little sense of grandeur, its all too busy, too much smoke and flying bits, and too tedious.

The characters are lifeless, we don't know anything about them, and they have no motivations. They hit their marks but nothing more, like set dressing, just enough presence to allow positioning the effects around them. And star actors are sprinkled throughout, but their characters are not at all essential to the minimal story. They seem to have been added at the last moment, maybe for some needed interest, but its little help.

The story is a pieced together mess, with numerous nonsensical leaps, and characters that suddenly appear when needed, though never seen before. Too much time is spent on story lines that have no relevance, like the job hunting, or all the bickering. Characters are sometimes bizarre in ways that are slapstick, and this stands out as interesting, though with no connection to anything.

This movie is listed as Sci-Fi, ideally an exploration of ideas, of what could be. But no ideas are evident here, and nothing is explored. In the first Transformers movie we got to see some of that, but not in this one. Instead we have goofy little sidekick robots, and giant evil robots that apparently have limitless amounts of power and energy at their disposal, enough to physically destroy cities or move their home planet to earth, though for some reason they need us earthlings to act as slave labor.

There were a few fun parts in the whole thing, like the historical revisionism, or when people are in a building that's being toppled over, or a few oddball laughs here and there. And the 3D was better than in many recent movies.

It might help if this movie were half as long, literally, to chop out all the empty filler, though it wouldn't help much. But at least there wouldn't be that painful "I love you" scene near the end. Heck, just edit out the girlfriend all together. Like the movie, she's pretty, but pretty much useless.