The Gentleman Burglar: A Review of Lupin (Part 2)

 developed for television by 

George Kay

Francoi Uzan

Before the popular Netflix series Lupin dropped earlier this year I had no real idea who the character was and had only ever associated him with a popular Japanese anime series, Lupin III, which featured a gangly gentleman burglar sporting sideburns and his high-tech crew. It was popular enough here to warrant a live-action, localized adaptation and big enough in its native Japan to earn a computer-generated film update. 

I was genuinely surprised to learn, then, that Lupin was actually a popular French pulp hero whose origings date back to the early 20th century, when he was created by Maurice LeBlanc, a sort of "anti-Sherlock Holmes," and that the anime was derived from that work. 

The live-action Netflix series starring charismatic French actor Omar Sy isn't quite a reimagining of the story of Arsene Lupin, but rather the story of Assane Diop (Sy), a man so inspired by his pulp adventures as a gentleman burglar that he has emulated his lifestyle as a thief and a bit of a grifter.  There's more to Diop's motivations, however, than just boosting rich people's valuables; he's a man on a mission, and that is to uncover the truth behind the unjust imprisonment of his father, Babakar Diop (Fargasse Assande) who was framed for the theft of a valuable necklace by his employer Hubert Pelligrini (Herve Pierre) who faked the theft to claim the insurance money. Using his consummate skill and planning, the younger Diop actually steals the necklace, which belonged to the infamous French Queen Marie Antoinette and sets in motion a whole chain of events which, he hopes, will bring justice to his father after two and a half decades. It won't be easy, though, as Pelligrini has considerable resources at his disposal, including a police captain (Vincent Garanger) in his pocket, as well as a couple of armed goons, including the lethal Leonard (Adama Niane) and Pascal (Nicolas Wanczycki) to do his dirty work. And naturally, having actually stolen a necklace, whatever his ulterior motives may be, Diop has also got cops hot on his trail, especially fellow Lupin devotee Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab).  Things get really serious when Pelligrini has Leonard kidnap Lupin's son Raoul (Etan Simon) much to Lupin's consternation and that of his ex-girlfriend Claire (Ludivigne Sagnier). 

It won't be easy to take down Pelligrini, but with the help of his trusty sidekick Benjamin (Anthony Guoy), and Pelligrini's own daughter Juliette (Clotilde Hesme), Diop may yet prevail. 

I'm not reviewing "Part I" of the series but rather the last five episodes, or Part II, which came out a little under a month ago on Netflix.  "Part I" featured episodes directed by Now You See Me helmer Louis Letterier and as a result had the distinct heist movie vibe, like a French Ocean's Eleven.  I enjoyed most of the first five episodes quite a bit, especially as the storytellers revealed Diop's backstory bit by tantalizing bit.  Unfortunately, near the end, the series suffered from a serious case of plot-driven storytelling, in which the consummately crafty Diop basically forgot he had a brain and did something really careless to help move the story forward. 

I mention this because I'm quite relieved to report that there's no such storytelling faux pas here in Part II.  The storytelling is straightfoward and doesn't rely on any cheap, character-destroying tropes, and the cast execute their roles perfectly, especially Sy, who truly carries the series from the first episode down to the last, helped along qutie well by Mamaidou Hadara, who plays the fifteen-year-old version of him. Leterrier doesn't come back to direct any more episodes, but the remaining five still have that fantastic heist movie verve.  I was able to predict one of the twists (and I don't dare reveal which one it was) but I still thoroughly enjoyed the series.  Sure, if one really tried one could probably pick apart the logic of how the story played out, but as is the trademark of Lupin, the name of the game here is sleight of hand, and the way that the writers and directors keep the story moving along is just so clever that I really couldn't be bothered to think of any way that the plot make sense.

Given Netflix's proclivity for giving its series the axe, I'm really happy that Lupin is easily one of their most-watched series and sincerely hope it gets more seasons in the future.

 

9/10

The Filipino Komiks Adaptation We've Long Been Waiting For: A Review of "Trese"

 developed for the screen by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldissimo, based on their comics series

When I first read the black-and-white issues of Budjette Tan's and Kajo Baldissimo's brand new comics series Trese back in 2005, I was hooked. The story of a detective, Alexandra Trese, taking on supernatural mysteries of the underworld armed was immensely appealing and for issue after issue Tan and Baldissimo just kept the compelling stories featuring creatures from Filipino mythology coming.  

This was long before the days of such sprawling comics adaptations as the Marvel Cinematic Universe but I already knew I wanted to see this series adapted into another form somehow. 

Therefore, when it was announced sometime during coronavirus pandemic (I don't remember exactly when anymore; time kind of lost all meaning then) that Netflix would be adapting this series into an anime, I was greatly enthused. Animation was, to my mind, the perfect vehicle as the storytellers wouldn't have to worry about finding the budget for special effects to render the supernatural aspect of the narrative. I only wondered how they would manage the comics' English dialogue with its smattering of Filipino. A Western voice cast would simply not do this series justice, I felt.

It's been nearly two weeks since all six episodes of Trese dropped on Netflix, and having seen them all twice over I'm happy to say I wasn't at all disappointed. The series boasted topnotch animation, tight scripting, and an incredibly atmospheric feel that accurately captured the uniquely Filipino sensibility of the show. 

In the show, as in the comics, Trese (voiced in the English dub by Shay Mitchell and in the Tagalog dub by Liza Soberano) is a private detective who investigates, with the help of her supernatural muscle the Kambal and her trusty man Friday Hank , crimes of a paranormal nature. More than being just an investigator, she is essentially a warrior-shaman, a "babaylan" of exceptional ability and, courtesy of her late father Anton, with extensive training in the arcane arts. She maintains a tenuous balance established by her father between the world of humanity and that of the many supernatural beings that live just beyond human sight. With the sudden uptick in horrific crimes perpetrated by denizens of the underworld, however, Trese fears that this fragile balance may soon be destroyed, 

I've already waxed lyrical about this show in a Youtube video but I still have other thoughts on this series that I didn't get to articulate on in the video, which was bit more free-flowing and extemporaneous than my written reviews tend to be. 

As an adaptation of the first six issues of the series, Trese works like a charm. Inevitable liberties may have been taken, but they are surprisingly few and none deviating in any substantial way from Budjette Tan's and Kajo Baldissimo's original vision, and the writing team captured the very best part of the comic: the incredible world-building.

I love the character of Trese, how she bears a terrible burden along with her responsibilities but isn't terribly emotional about it, until the weight of her burden starts to get too heavy. She's believably deadpan, but every now and again her very human fragility shines through. Both the writing and the animation work together wonderfully to bring this to life. More importantly, though, they introduce the viewer to Filipino folklore in one of the canniest ways possible: they tease it, bit by bit, episode by episode, and draw the viewer in with each new glimpse of this fantastical world and the creatures that inhabit it. 

My two beefs, however, are with the voice acting, particularly in the English track, and specifically with the Filipino accents, which, to my mind, worked on a 50/50 basis. Some of them were knocked right out of the park, but others came across as more Latin American than Filipino. Regardless of whether the actors' accents constitute their real-life Filipino accents in America or Canada, they owed it to authenticity to give genuine Filipino accents and not merely Fil-Am or Fil-Canadian accents. At least half of the cast got it right, but others rather notably didn't. 

This latter half, unfortunately, includes lead voice actress Shay Mitchell, who gave Trese her English voice. Mitchell is a capable actress and I thought she nicely captured Trese's inner strength and the conflict bubbling within her, but whenever she spoke Tagalog I basically cringed. She could get away with the relatively short phrases, but as the spells she recited got longer and longer her Tagalog made me shrink deeper into my chair.  All I can say here, as I did in my video review, is that she needs a full-time dialect coach, and not just the producer giving her notes, which, based on the "behind the scenes" special that Netflix aired, appears to be what happened. If she had a dialect coach for the first season, then she needs a better one next time, hopefully one from Manila and not LA.  

This quibble notwithstanding, I still enjoyed the series quite a bit.

I also enjoyed the Tagalog dub, which I watched on my second viewing, and I have to respectfully disagree with the critiques of Liza Soberano, who dubbed Trese in the Tagalog language version. She has widely been accused of being "wooden" but in truth, she was being true to Trese's deadpan nature, which dates all the way back to her appearances in the comics. I'm no Liza fan, and in truth I couldn't even listen to her speak during the "making of" special as I fast-forwarded through all her parts, but her voice acting was not a problem, nor was that of any of the other Filipino actors in the Tagalog dub.

What I did find problematic, though, was an abrupt and ridiculous exposition dump that took place in the first third of the very last episode, the kind of monologue that would put even some of the more exposition-indulgent Japanese anime to shame. The story, which had been moving along with a nice, brisk pace at that point ground to a halt, and in an oddly "meta" moment, the setting literally went from day to night in the course of the speech. It was not a shining moment for anyone involved. 

My issues with accents and last-minute exposition aside, though, I am very much a fan of this show and I dearly hope it has a future with Netflix, who are notorious for giving even popular shows the chopping block. The production value of this show is right up there with any other anime Netflix has produced, and it deserves to live to see another day.  

8/10

Netflix Does Superheroes: A Review of Jupiter's Legacy

created for TV by Steven DeKnight

from the comic books by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely

I have to be honest: I have mixed feelings about a lot of the work of famed comic-book writer Mark Millar. Apart from his early stuff for Marvel, including his phenomenal first run on The Ultimates which has explicitly been acknowledged as a huge influence on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general and on The Avengers films in particular, and a yearlong run on Spider-Man that I genuinely enjoyed, his work has been somewhat hit-or-miss for me. I definitely had issues with the original  Civil War comics and I enjoyed the movie far more, and I have also had my share of issues with his original work, of which I have read a smattering, like Chosen , Supercrooks and Kick-Ass.  What irks about Millar's work is that too often, it feels like it's written primarily for the shock value, or is nothing more than shock for shock's sake. 

That's not always the case, though; some of his original work stems from his genuine love of the superhero genre that he grew up with, and feels like an attempt to put his own spin on it, for better or worse.

Jupiter's Legacy, the recently released Netflix adaptation of one of Millar's original creations, which, I'll wager, was created with either the big or small screen already firmly in mind, strikes me as one of the latter kind of original work. 

For eight episodes, showrunner Steven DeKnight and his team of writers and directors guide cast members of Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb, Ben Daniels and Matt Lanter, among others, through an engaging tapestry of stories that mix golden age superheroics and a more cynical, modern -day superhero narrative. 

Duhamel and Bibb play spouses Sheldon and Grace, better known to the world by their superhero aliases the Utopian and Lady Liberty, who, together with Sheldon's brother Walter (Daniels), his friend George (Lanter) and a couple of other people founded the superhero team the Union of Justice in the 1930s. Nearly a hundred years after they first received their superpowers, the couple, having aged more slowly than most people but having aged nonetheless, find themselves grappling not only with a resurgent supervillain threat but with their own somewhat difficult, super-powered children, son Brandon aka Paragon (Andrew Horton) who is eager to follow in his parents' footsteps but is somewhat headstrong about doing it his own way, and Chloe (Elena Kampouris), who has turned her back on superheroing altogether for the fast-paced,drug-fueled life of a supermodel. When a new type of ultra-violent supervillain kills members of their team and forces Brandon to do the unthinkable, Sheldon and Grace find themselves confronted with difficult choices on how to proceed, and Sheldon finds himself looking back to where it all began: in the Great Depression, when he and his brother Walter were struggling to keep their father's flailing steel company alive. 

I'll admit that the intertwining narrative of past and present was sometimes a chore to sit through, and that it isn't always smoothly handled, but all told, I sincerely liked this approach to superhero storytelling, not only marrying the Golden Age narrative with the more modern, darker take on the subject matter but making this marriage one of the central sources of conflict.

One of the main drivers of conflict in the story is the "code" of the Union of Justice, which really boils down to one simple rule: no killing. It's not the newest subject of debate in superhero storytelling; DC and Marvel have been pretty much doing it for years, but I really enjoyed the presentation of the characters' journeys from the Great Depression to nearly a century later. 

It also turned the narrative on its head a bit; rather than the 30s era superhero being deprived of his virtuous parents, Sheldon instead discovers that his late father, who killed himself when his company went belly-up, isn't quite the hero he imagined him to be, which makes his journey as the scion of a failed steel tycoon one of redemption rather than revenge. I appreciated that it was this journey towards becoming a superhero that shapes his values, which eventually form the Union's code. Duhamel's committed performance makes it work.  His code isn't born out of idealism, but out of the knowledge of what it means to live without a code, and I liked that. Duhamel, Bibb, Daniels and Lanter are at the heart of the story, and their synergy makes even the more out-there aspects of the narrative work, because they really give it a human core. 

Given that this is a TV series, the seams in the visual effects tend to show fairly often. The super-speed and flying effects often made me wince. The production value on the whole is decent at best, and certainly nowhere near the much slicker Netflix offerings like Altered Carbon, but considering how Netflix has spent big and lost before, I get where they're coming from.

Jupiter's Legacy is a long way from being one of my favorite superhero stories, but it is a welcome distraction in these times and something decent to pass the time until the stuff I'm really looking forward to, like Trese and Lupin: Season 2 finally hit Netflix. 

7/10