Finesse was the selling point of The Night Manager when it debuted in 2016. It was a class above other spy thrillers, setting itself among moneyed elites rotten ones, but elites nonetheless and furnishing itself with luxury locations. In Tom Hiddleston it had a lead with a reputation that signalled that the often tacky espionage genre was looking to improve itself.
In any case, I'm glad to be with you all and grateful for any opportunity to pore over this medium that we love and will continue to love, stubbornly, to its final breath. As will, I'm sure, Steven Soderbergh, who, for all his oft-expressed pessimism about the industry, continues to churn out work that feels like a paragon of wit, elegance, and the kind of all-around savoir faire that we used to associate with Hollywood on a more regular basis.
A newly released Bollywood spy thriller is winning praise and raising eyebrows in equal measure in India and Pakistan, over its retelling of bitter tensions between the South Asian neighbours. Sunk in a sepia tone, Dhurandhar, which was released in cinemas last week, is a 3.5-hour-long cross-border political spy drama that takes cinemagoers on a violent and bloody journey through a world of gangsters and intelligence agents set against the backdrop of India-Pakistan tensions.
But, for genre fans, and perhaps Marvel fans in specific, many will note that his last feature film ever was a brief cameo in Avengers: Endgame, in which he reprised his role as Alexander Pierce, one of the higher-ups at S.H.I.E.L.D. The Endgame moment was very brief because the real movie in which Redford plays Pierce isCaptain America: The Winter Soldier, which remains not only one of the most consequential Marvel movies in the saga but also holds up today as a solid superhero spy flick.
The great Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg once told me that the problem with movie sex scenes is that the movie just stops while we watch the actors have sex. I feel that way about action scenes, especially on TV. Although a handful of directors can make them thrilling Kathryn Bigelow, Jackie Chan, George Miller I nearly always find myself waiting for the chase to end or the gunfire to die down so we can get back to the story.
In season five of 'Slow Horses', unexpected citywide events prompt the dysfunctional espionage team to investigate connections, testing their skills amid bureaucratic chaos.