This pilot was, by chance, the 10,000th title I've rated on IMDb, so I was obliged to mark the occasion with a review. I only later noticed the series (or at least season 1) is a remake of a Swedish/Danish series "Bron" *and* that the original was airing on another channel. I had already missed the airings of the first episodes, but it does not matter: if a remake is done well enough, it does *not* matter how faithful it is to the original - or, even how similar the remake is. Some of the best remakes or "re-imaginings" aren't even in the same genre as the original, be they films or TV series.
The Bridge, however, appears to be in the same genre - crime - as the original and at least starts with the same genius of an idea. It's actually ironical that Americans *haven't* made a series about a murder on the USA-Mexico border - *literally* on the actual border, as it is such an obvious idea, at least in hindsight.
The first thing that is noticeable - or unnoticeable, as it may seem to some - is how confident The Bridge is. It does not pull out any special "style", "flair" or CGI-dazzle - just plain old good writing, acting and film-making (the technical aspects). That confidence pays of in the rarest of qualities in film & TV: total believability.
One will definitely have questions after the pilot, but those questions will most likely be of the speculative type, such as "Why *is* Sonya so odd?" - not of the accusatory type, such as "Why should we take any of this seriously?" Because we will take The Bridge seriously. It feels real. Sure, it has some restrictions (such as no nudity and no swearing) placed on it that would not exist in an HBO show, but like The Walking Dead, for example, it circumvents those restrictions. This is not a show in which nude sex or swearing are needed to make the viewer buy the story.
In hindsight, it is easy to say that while the pilot raises questions, it is entirely intentional on part of the makers: the answers *will* come, be they about the plot or the characters. Speaking of which: while the plot is not even at half-point at the time of writing this review, its progression has remained intriguing and utterly addictive. One should beware of making assumptions - they *may* crumble in any of the following episodes, as the multiple plot strands *may* at an unexpected moment take a surprise turn or meeting that is still entirely plausible. One simply *must* know where this will end up.
Then there are the characters. Diane "Bridget von Hammersmark" Kruger takes a difficult, oddball character not unlike Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan or Jessi XX of "Kyle XY" and makes her completely believable. Whereas the implausibly over-rational yet exactly because of that so entertaining 'Bones' feels a bit of a stretch, Sonya Cross somehow feels like someone who may exist somewhere in our world - and at this point we know her only by *some* of her eccentricities. Kruger, like the underrated Jaimie Alexander in her phenomenal role as Jessi XX, uses little expressions and subtle body language that speak volumes about the character. Alexander had the benefit that the viewers knew her character's back-story when she made her appearance in Kyle XY, but Kruger has to act without that safety net.
Demian Bichir as the other main character, Marco Ruiz, is only slightly less impressive, and that is because for the dynamic to work, his role needs to be the "average man". We learn more about his character in the pilot, but its the insight we get that matters, not the secrets withheld as in Sonya's case.
The attention to supporting characters is impressive, too. None of them comes across as a stockpile character, thanks to both good writing and excellent, experienced actors such as Annabeth Gish, the legendary Ted Levine, the fantastic Thomas M. Wright or Matthew Lillard (has it already been 17 years since Scream?), to name but a few.
There is much to praise, but A Very Special Mention goes to the show-makers for the courage of having the Mexicans actually speaking Spanish among themselves, often even while in the presence of American characters who cannot understand them, whereas the viewer can, thanks to the subtitles. And some poor subtitle-hater somewhere probably thought that because The Bridge is an American remake of a foreign show, they would not have to bear any subtitles. An impressive 9/10, one of the 942 I've given out of 10,000 (the remaining 234 are 10/10s).
