I was watching “Sisu” in theatres with my wife, and the trailer played for “Citadel.” I saw the Russo brothers and Stanley Tucci and thought, “Oh, that looks neat.” It looked like an action flick with spy elements, so I figured it would be fun. Little did I know it wasn’t a movie but a TV show and was already streaming as soon as I got home. Neat! So I buckled in and, for the next few weeks, watched each episode as it dropped, fully planning to write a review.
Then I watched it again. Mostly because I often found myself bored and not really paying attention. Even so, on my rewatch, I realized I didn’t really miss anything. In fact, when the sixth episode finished, I was a bit shocked. That was it? That’s all? “Citadel” was not the entertaining action flick I wanted it to be or the fun spy romp. In fact, it seems confused about what it wants to be.
The Plot Behind Citadel
Citadel is an independent spy agency that wants to work for peace. Sounds a lot like “Kingsman,” but okay, I can deal with it. It recruits only the best spies, and they often refer to the CIA and MI6 as amateurs. Citadel acts indecently with some very high-level technology. I’m talking about stuff that is out of this world.
The first episode sets up our heroes and the fact that Citadel was betrayed and, in one swoop, burned to the ground. Agents are killed or spread to the ends of the earth. Our heroes and top Citadel agents, Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh survive an ambush meant to eliminate them but are hit with a Citadel program to erase their memories to prevent interrogation and capture.
The show kicks off eight years later with Mason living under the name Kyle Conroy. He’s now married with a daughter and wife, who he met in an amnesiac recovery group therapy session. He has flashbacks to his old life but can’t remember anything. His life is interrupted by the heart of the show — the hilarious Bernard Orlick, a former Citadel head honcho.
Kyle doesn’t have his operational memories, but apparently his ‘body’ knows how to fight, and he still has his skills….as well as his ripped physique. From there, the show moves on with a MacGuffin to save, and he reunites with Nadia and the bad guys, etc. It’s the amnesiac spy trope explored.
The Problem with “Citadel”
The problem is the show has no soul. The tropes are fine. Spy movies are often tropey as is. The problem is the show is just tropes, with no fun play or angle on them. It often feels like it’s less of a trope and almost a plagiarization of “The Bourne Identity,” “Kingsman,” and James Bond.
Another issue is that the show can’t figure out what it wants to be. Sometimes it has a slightly campy edge like the previous generation of Bond films. The action and chase scenes are crazy over the top, and some of the characters seem lifted from that world. For example, two murderous European twins are antagonists, and they feel lifted from a campy spy flick. In one scene, a character kicks a knife out of the air and into the neck of a bad guy.
Stuff like that is fun, but then we have this super serious relationship drama and dark subject matter that sours the mood. Also, I don’t really like any of the characters outside of Stanley Tucci. He’s funny, charming, and entertaining. Our main characters are either boring or seemingly terrible people. Outside of him, the murderous twins are great but underutilized and hardly explored. Everyone else is just boring.
It’s also very predictable. By episode two, I correctly guessed who betrayed Citadel. It’s a bit easy to figure out, and admittedly, only one twist got me. Everything else you see coming from a mile away.
The Action
One of the brighter parts of “Citadel” is that it has some great action scenes. The Russos do know how to make excellent fight scenes. The opening episode sadly highlights the best action scene in the whole series. The big train fight was a lot of fun and a highlight of the series.
The action after is tight but far from believable. The shooting and gunplay are fun but shouldn’t be taken with any degree of seriousness. In one scene, a Mossberg 590 blows a guy backward several feet. There is also a great scene where our hero, Mason, shoots down an incoming paratrooper, then uses his body and parachute to escape down a mountain.
Stuff like that is really fun, and it’s where the show excels.
The Guns of “Citadel”
Guns are not the star of the show. They aren’t featured like they are in “John Wick” and “Extraction.” The most common handgun you see is some all-black, polymer frame, striker-fired design that’s unremarkable. We have Glocks, SIGs, and an HK or two. In the beginning, there is the classic Walther PPK which armed James Bond for, basically, ever. Although Nadia identifies it as a Beretta 22. An odd thing to misidentify, especially when it’s such a favorite in spy media.
The Mossberg 590 I mentioned was cool to see, and it unrealistically throws bad guys backward, to my amusement.
One other gun that sands out belongs to the murderous twins. They use what appears to be a B&T APC 223 with a fancy X-ray optic to shoot at the good guys. It allows them to see through a car and target their enemies. We only see it once, which is weird because that seems pretty useful.
The only Glock that stood out was a custom model, it likes like a Zev if I had to guess, but I’m willing to be wrong on that. As usual, the good guys always hit their mark, and the bad guys went to the Stormtrooper Academy for gunfighting.
Worth Watching?
Amazon spent $300 million on this show, and I don’t see where it went. They have already green-lit a second season and apparently a variety of multinational spinoffs. Apparently, they are making an Italian spinoff, an Indian spinoff, etc. It seems like they are putting the cart before the horse, but hey, I don’t own a private space exploration firm.
