Rahul Desai
Suspense is not quite the selling point anymore; slick violence rules; and the Bond-meets-Bourne-meets-Hunt storylines are inbreeding siblings of each other.
Citadel might be six episodes long, on a weekly run till the end of May, but the two screener episodes offered to critics do the job. One knows exactly how it’ll unfold. Perhaps one is supposed to.
The trick is for a show like this to make us enjoy its predictability. As a viewer, we need to feel not just vindicated but satisfied when corny elements find fruition on screen.
Having said that, I’ve quite enjoyed the pointed goofiness of the first two episodes. I like the unoriginal ridiculousness of Citadel existing as the Mother Teresa of spy agencies – they course-correct history and rescue people from the misdeeds of their own national agencies.
Maybe it’s no surprise that Marvel overlords, the Russo brothers – whose The Gray Man (2022) was a condensed version of this bad-but-fun formula – are executive producers of Citadel.
I’m not a fan, but we live in an age where mediocrity becomes entertaining if it stops pretending to be better. Citadel is another addictive brick in that wall.
Thank you for reading
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