Paris Has Fallen

The British Embassy in Paris is holding a party. Jacob Pearce (Sean Harris) leads a well armed group to infiltrate the gather. Zara Taylor (Ritu Arya) is a MI6 operative. Vincent Taleb (Tewfik Jallab) is protecting the French Minister of Defense. Pearce led a Foreign Legion group in Afghanistan which was captured by the Taliban. He wants revenge for an unspecified conspiracy.

The "Has Fallen" franchise is not to be taken seriously. It is a franchise based on mindless action fun. Somebody is attacked. Something has fallen. It's not a hard concept or a home to smart writing. At least, this show is staying in that general area. It's not smartly written and there is action. It does abandon the concept of a short time period in the movies. The problem starts with the pile of cash. It is straight up Joker. It is non-realistic. That's the moment when I realized what this show is and what's its limitation. It's not to be taken seriously and it works to gin up tension whether it's deserved or not.

First of all, I am a big Sean harris fan.. He first caught my attention in the Borgia's HBO series some years back. He has a very particular style when he plays so-called bad Guys. It has been great watching his career advance. He is very sinister as the bad guy in this film, and adds his own credible spin and style on his villan The rest of the cast is sterling as well. The film suffers from some credibility issues in the relationships of the two main officers pursuing Harris' charecter. The rifles used in very long range shooting could never make those long shots...in a film with a lot of authentic details. The villan has killed a lot of government people who he believes were responsible for his lover and her two children. It is diabolical, even plausible up to a point. But the direction and script fall off rather sharply at the end. The end is out of sync with the rest of the film, weak. There is also a huge unresolved issue of the corporation CEO who funded behind the scenes the entire plot and who made a fortune from it, he is just left dangling and forgotten at the end. They could at least had a 30 second scene at the end where is being handcuffed. The film opens very strong and builds a suspense that keeps moving, but is very weak at the end. Good work by Sean Harris and look forward to seeing what he does next.

A seeming terrorist group takes over an embassy event. You are thinking "Die Hard." A woman, who later claims to "work in HR," fights back and kills two of the attackers. She is really good. She should have her own show. You are still thinking "Die Hard." The woman, and an Embassy bodyguard, successfully foil the initial attack. The attackers retreat through a hole in the swears just as the police crash through the front door. The police immediately notice our heroine, mainly because she is holding a weapon which was recently fired. So far, so good. Moments later, however, the camera picks up our heroine being treated by a medic, blanket around her. Somehow, in the mere blink of an eye, even though she was holding a weapon when the cavalry arrived, even though she holds no official position in law enforcement, she has already been cleared and released. Now you are thinking "WTF?" I am making this point to show the importance of subliminal cues in a fictional series. You are barely halfway into E01 of the series, and your brain is already screaming, "this makes no sense." And it doesn't. France has produced some incredible TV content (Spirale, Le Bureau) but this is not one of those. This is light, fluffy, fantasy stuff. You may like it. Or you may not. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Ep 1 starts well and promises a lot.

Fights are well choreographed and tightly shot and edited.

Ep 2 just about keeps the pace. But we are no longer playing top our styrengths.

By Ep 3 the writers have run out of ideas and the dialogue has started to creak. Loudly.

Ep 4 and there is no denying this is never going to deliver on the promises of Ep 1. By now the dialogue is excruciating.

A general note to Casting Directors: privileged kids fom posh schools should be dicouraged from affecting a glottal stop. It doesn't add street cre. It just comes across as fake at best but more often than not as patronising. Just say the words.

...then the creator Howard Overman wants to write and produce his show and all goes downhill from there.

Dialogues are predictably awful

Scenes in Paris were made like the city has no cops no tourists no body living there...just like every time they start shooting nobody notice or what?

They send the two main characters to fight a full well-trained army of terrorists pretty much by themselves...

They're so many holes in this plot that the original idea - that is pretty good - becomes irrelevant to all the amateurish production..

On the only good side...some good fight that makes it OK to call it an action series.

That is probably the only season you'll get

BTW the same creator had another great idea (War of the Worlds remake) but it all went downhill the same way...this guy should really hire someone else to write the stories.

4.5/10.