t-constantinho

The show is pretty good, however the character Netflix created is pretty far what Sobhraj was. I remember reading everything I could about Sobhraj even before the internet existed and I roamed in the same area.

Netflix took the easy path, describing Sobhraj as a creepy unexpressive individual, enjoying to kill and permanently posing as a victim of wacism.

He was none of these things, or he could be at any given time if needed. That is why he was such a fascinating character. He spoke perfectly well many languages (around 10 if I remember correctly), and he could easily has been a university teacher in international and national laws, History, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy and many more areas.

He was not creepy, he was the most charming person you'll ever met and made you fall in love with him. He was like a fish in the water everywhere.

Netflix shows noone of that.

He had an extreme level of IQ and EQ that he was using for crimes that were not even that impressive (killing people for a passport ? That an overkill to say the least). I remember somewhere around early 2000' reading an article mentioning he had been caught in the south of France trying to steal a watch or something like that on an open air market.

He was not a victim, and certainly not from wacism. France in the 70's is not the USA, no-one would care to see a remotely Asian looking guy at a Marseilles's school or being a gem dealer in Paris. Plus France gave him everything and more after her mother brought him from Saigon.

He was such not a victim that he learned German in a few months .... just so he could read Nietschze without translation as he loved the Super Human concept. He would never whine about wacism .... but it is 2021 so Big Businesses like Netflix has to make everything fitting their antiwhite/antimale agenda.

Also, race had nothing to do with the targeting of its victims, he targeted Europeans because they were the richest but also had some none withe victims.

Usually he would not kill his victims, but sometime he did. I think he was just a psychopath, he would kill just so the victim will stop moving and talking. Nothing more.

The (super wacist country of France) freed him and gave him everything in the 90's (because we are so wacist in France), but at the end of the day, I'm glad he got a taste of Nepalese real Justice.

Starting with bad points:

• They decided to use permanent flashback, there is no beginning, no middle and no end to the story, it is all messed up, unbearable. It is a very poor choice, specially because the history of the conquest was to slowly discover that there was a quasi mythical city in a middle of a continent.
• It is an amazon production, so they bend history a bit in order to fit their liberal stereotypes (Europeans bad, Christians bad, Muslims good etc ...) but not too much (and these strong women lovers forgot about Maria de Estrada).
• The production want us to believe that Spaniards massacred thousands of cholulan just for fun ...because "Europeans bad" I guess. The fact is that Cholula was a trap, the Spaniards were about to get massacred so they (over)reacted the way they did. Later on, Alvarado massacre was much more disputable however motivated by his hatred for local tradition (kid sacrifices etc ...).
• Obviously Cortes never had a muslin girlfriend, and if muslins weren't very popular in Spain, it was because Spaniards just liberated themselves from muslins after 8 centuries of domination (I wish liberal production mentioned that more often but .... "Muslims good" I guess).

Good points:

• Except few exceptions mentioned above, they really try to stick to the history even with tiny details. We got more of the point of view of the Conquistadors but there are a lot of fantastic descriptions of the very diverse pre-Columbian societies.

So it is fantastic to have a fairly accurate visual depiction of what were the fascinating pre-Columbian civilizations and this incredible moment of history. But in order to understand I recommend to study the history of the conquest before watching the show because of the permanent flash back/forward. I would have gave a 10 stars if the history was in order.

The plot is very good even if totally unoriginal, so the movie had a great potential. It just turned out to be very political (USA Bad, Trump Bad, Black People good) and .... that's it. I guess it is all what hollywood want to produce today. The (over)acting is bad, the action scenes are utterly ridiculous .... painful to watch. A waste.

First 2 seasons were really good, story of a regular white collar dude navigating threw his job, his family, drug lords, local mafia, redneck clans, local business .... trying to keep control in the spiral. Featuring very good characters (including fantastic Ruth). Season 3, in a stunning and brave move, they decided to make the show about female taking power.... and.... it's boring. Wendy is on every scenes, the mysterious drug cartel lady lawyer just became boring .... boring. Had to stop watching after 3 episodes.

What is facsinating is to consider that French have lost the battle of globalization, and this movie is part of the war, a battle to rewrite history.

Too many political correctness clichés (strong wamam, meanies bullies etc ...), a Netflix show bringing its political agenda to Spain. Anyway the real problem is that the show could be great but it is heavy flawed and get dumber every passing episode. It is a problem because the plot has a real huge potential. Basically the plot is based on the very elaborated plan of a mastermind (the professor) to rob a bank... great.... but he choses the worst people for the job (psychopath, hysteric girls etc ...). Eventually it doesn't make any sense.