I must be missing something. I had extremely high hopes for this one. I also adored the first two seasons of Gomorrah (the third was okay, haven't seen the fourth). The synopsis sounded promising. Following a massive cocaine shipment down the line across continents? Sign me up. Unfortunately, it falls flat.
I feel like Zero(x3) isn't quite sure of what it wants to be. You'd expect a story like that to be grand in scale; a crime epic, examining the different governments, institutions, and organizations that enable the drug trade. Something like The Wire, but even broader. Instead, we focus entirely on three small groups of individuals. The story is also confined specifically to this single shipment of drugs. What this boils down to is three, practically unrelated stories of a typical "deal gone wrong" scenario. None of the stories are particularly engaging. They struggle for power, things go wrong, there's shootouts and violence. As standalone stories, they'd be pretty run of the mill action thrillers, light on the thriller, and characterization, depth... Also, the flashbacks every episode when two characters and their stories converge are kinda gimmicky. It's usually pretty easy to surmise how the character ended up there, but you have to watch their viewpoint for half the episode anyway.
The characters are another major problem. I don't care about a single one of them. The only ones that are even remotely fleshed out are the brother and sister shippers, and they're pretty flimsy (and unbelievable), nowhere near enough for us to care. The rest are cardboard cutouts. We get no sense that their lives exist outside of drug trafficking, no matter how many times you show the mafioso hugging his kid. They're ruthless and evil and motivated by money and power (also God I guess in one case). Nothing deeper beyond that.
I love a slow burn, but this one draaaags. A whole lot of just nothing happening, and when it does, it rarely feels satisfying. Shots and scenes go on way longer than they should. It just didn't live up to the potential to me. But hey, by all means, give it a shot, because lower score reviews are in the minority. Just don't expect groundbreaking writing. It's a drug story with nice atmospheric shots of exotic locations, decent action, shocking violence, and scary bad guys. I just feel like I've seen this before, only done better.
Edit: after watching the final episode (I had watched all but one or two prior to this review), I bumped my rating up a star. Once the main stories finally converge, it wraps up neatly, and in the end, made for a decent little fictional crime story with good production values. The journey to get there just took entirely too long, was full of cliches, and loses your interest many times along the way. Still not the type of series I was expecting, and my original review still stands.
I feel like Zero(x3) isn't quite sure of what it wants to be. You'd expect a story like that to be grand in scale; a crime epic, examining the different governments, institutions, and organizations that enable the drug trade. Something like The Wire, but even broader. Instead, we focus entirely on three small groups of individuals. The story is also confined specifically to this single shipment of drugs. What this boils down to is three, practically unrelated stories of a typical "deal gone wrong" scenario. None of the stories are particularly engaging. They struggle for power, things go wrong, there's shootouts and violence. As standalone stories, they'd be pretty run of the mill action thrillers, light on the thriller, and characterization, depth... Also, the flashbacks every episode when two characters and their stories converge are kinda gimmicky. It's usually pretty easy to surmise how the character ended up there, but you have to watch their viewpoint for half the episode anyway.
The characters are another major problem. I don't care about a single one of them. The only ones that are even remotely fleshed out are the brother and sister shippers, and they're pretty flimsy (and unbelievable), nowhere near enough for us to care. The rest are cardboard cutouts. We get no sense that their lives exist outside of drug trafficking, no matter how many times you show the mafioso hugging his kid. They're ruthless and evil and motivated by money and power (also God I guess in one case). Nothing deeper beyond that.
I love a slow burn, but this one draaaags. A whole lot of just nothing happening, and when it does, it rarely feels satisfying. Shots and scenes go on way longer than they should. It just didn't live up to the potential to me. But hey, by all means, give it a shot, because lower score reviews are in the minority. Just don't expect groundbreaking writing. It's a drug story with nice atmospheric shots of exotic locations, decent action, shocking violence, and scary bad guys. I just feel like I've seen this before, only done better.
Edit: after watching the final episode (I had watched all but one or two prior to this review), I bumped my rating up a star. Once the main stories finally converge, it wraps up neatly, and in the end, made for a decent little fictional crime story with good production values. The journey to get there just took entirely too long, was full of cliches, and loses your interest many times along the way. Still not the type of series I was expecting, and my original review still stands.