Citadel: Priyanka Chopra proves again she is ready for A-list Hollywood, so where’s the original script?

With Citadel, Priyanka Chopra proves she is as good as it takes to be a top-rate spy hero in Hollywood. She kicks butt as Ethan Hunt, shoots from the hip as Jason Bourne, and socks the living daylights out of the baddies as James Bond 007. Heck, cast her as 007 for all she’s worth — if they’re still confused over what happens to that franchise post Daniel Craig, given her Citadel form she might just nail it.

Unfortunately for Chopra, she has to continue trying to prove her stakes at Hollywood stardom in cliché-ridden bags of excesses that give her little original space to excel. Her much-vaunted Citadel is rehash of Hunt, Bourne or Bond’s worlds, after all, and that is not necessarily a good thing when you are helming a $300-million small-screen series. Halfway through with three episodes out, the six-episode first season of Citadel has so far looked like a generic copy of Ethan Hunt’s Mission: Impossible in its hi-tech stunt extravaganza, tried fuelling drama over memory and memory loss in a way it brings back Jason Bourne recall, and stuffed in a goodlooking package of basic suspense and corny one-night flings in a way it celebrates Bond excesses.

It has all seemed like cheesy fun so far, made to order to click as an indulgent binge as long as the episodes play out their 40 to 45 minutes of runtime. No points deducted if you blank out immediately after an episode is over — there is not much of an impressive storyline to recollect, anyway.

Crux of the matter till midway point of the season, for those who came in late: Chopra as Nadia Sinh and Richard Madden as Mason Kane are dishy superspies who work for the super secretive agency, Citadel. The show opens with a breathtaking action sequence on a train somewhere in the Italian Alps that would have you feel executive co-producers Anthony and Joe Russo spent too much time binging on random train stunts from 007 or M:I flicks along with series creators Josh Appelbaum, Bryan Oh and David Weil. The sequence leaves you stunned despite its cliches for the sheer vim that drives it, and it leaves Mason and Nadia presumed dead.

The narrative then moves back and forth in time to tell us Mason, his memory wiped off, now leads a quiet life as Kyle with wife and daughter. Nadia has survived, too, her memory remotely erased by Citadel agent Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci). The ‘bad guys’ here are the Manticore, a syndicate of wealthy elite seemingly unsatiated in their greed for unlimited power. All we need to know about them is their agents attacked Mason and Nadia on the train and they are after the top-secret Citadel X case. Sub plots that hurtle into the screenplay as the timeline oscillates between past and present include the kidnapping of Kyle and family by Orlick, the kidnapping of Orlick by the superbad Manticore head Dahlia Archer, played brilliantly by Lesley Manville, and a bed scene to reveal some ‘history’ existed at some point between Mason and Nadia, which he suggests was “lightning in a bottle” and she assesses was more like “a flash in the pan”.

Dialogues such as these make you wonder if Brothers Russos and company were deliberate with their vision of celebrating the corny. With Avengers, the Russos elevated comicbook cinema to the level of pop art. With Extraction, which they co-scripted and co-produced, they tried rendering a similar impact to retro violence on screen but the outcome was middling success. The trouble with Citadel is the series banks too much on the Russo brand name with little actual participation of the brothers with the Midas touch in the creative process of the show, and it shows.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Priyanka (@priyankachopra)

Look closely, and the mixing up of the timeline, letting the past weave into the present, was perhaps necessary to keep viewer interest intact, given the fact that there isn’t actually much of a story happening till the halfway point of the entire season. The back-and-forth movement of the narrative, though, does not always work. At times, the burst of flashback thrown in merely serves to disturb what is more immediate and more appealing in the storytelling process.

Without giving away spoilers on what’s coming up, the third episode does end in a way that it leaves us with the promise of a twist which could take the storyline to a different high. The mystery of the Citadel X case still remains, too, and its possible unravelling could take the overall plot beyond the show’s mundane bouts of predictability.

What has worked best for Citadel so far is its cast. You could say Priyanka Chopra and Richard Madden seem too uber-glam, too perfectly posey at all times to be real spies, but then this was never meant to be a reflection of reality. The impact that the characters exude is probably a generic thing, meant to gel with the show’s celebration of excesses. While the awesome Tucci along with Madden and even Manville would seem like natural choices in a spy saga set in the West and dominated by White agents, Chopra as Nadia is the inclusivity-prompted anomaly that adds quirk to the casting. The creator trio of Appelbaum, Oh and Weil have done smartly to let her take the lead over Madden in most of the otherwise set-piece action.

The grouse, even if you dig this as a hardcore spy flick fan, is it could have been more original in the story it tells, and in its execution. Too much of Citadel banks on formula in its three episodes so far and, without giving away spoilers, what’s coming does not seem to be interested in doling out a pathbreaking saga. But the, the Russos perhaps would opt to splurge their $300 million in big screen lavishness if they were out to redefine the spy saga as a genre with Citadel.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.