Brief Story Line
Story focused on Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito - The Mandalorian TV series, Maze Runner: The Death Cure etc) who wanted to do a heist job on some bearers bond worth USD 7 billion kept in the vault of security company SLS led by Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell - The Man in the High Castle TV series, Old etc). Leo enlisted the help of several people including the smuggler Stan (Peter Mark Kendall - Strange Angel TV series etc), the chemist Judy (Rosaline Elbay) with her husband the safe cracker Bob (Jai Courtney - The Terminal List TV series, Suicide Squad etc), the driver RJ (Jordan Mendoza) and the lawyer Ava Mercer (Paz Vega - Rambo: Last Wish, Acts of Vengeance etc).
The heist job would seem almost impossible to do with the sophisticated security of the vault, plus SLS also had a brilliant digital security head Hannah (Tati Gabrielle - Uncharted, The Emoji Movie etc). Things became very complicated when FBI agent Nazan (Niousha Noor) got wind on this heist plan and tried her best to capture the persons in action.
So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
I mentioned above that I was interested with the series due to its uniqueness. It was said in the brief opening with the title "Black" that viewers could watch each episode in different order since it told a different time of the heist that spanned 25 years. However, as I am a person who is not accustomed to jumping or skipping episodes of a series, I still opted to watch it in the normal order from episode 1-8 which all had titles of colors, such as Yellow, Green and so on.
Now if you have noticed from my previous posts, you would know that I really love heist story, be it in a movie or in a series due to its intelligent way of stealing, conning, manipulating and the thrills. So this one obviously made me excited, especially when it was shown how difficult and virtually impossible to rob the vault. The standard story of a heist would always include the crew, the villain and the authorities (in this case it was the FBI). Generally audience would always root for the heist crews, even though they were supposed to be the criminals.
The characters of the crew were quite varying, from their leader Leo who had a personal reason for doing the heist, the explosive Bob or the smart Ava. Their dynamics was quite interesting, although we could immediately see where the conflicts would arise from. Meanwhile the villain Roger Salas was the type that would make us feel he had it coming. Btw the FBI agent Nazan did not get any sympathy from me as she felt more like another villain, although she did provide an interesting cat and mouse chase with the crews.
The highlight of the series would definitely be the heist. Thing is, for such an intricate heist it did not feel that spectacular. And the twist that happened during the execution, somehow did not really surprise me as it seemed not too subtly shown. Only the why that I did not know but was explained subsequently. Regarding the possibility of not watching in the specific order, I must applaud the series creator Eric Garcia for having thought this unique way. He is originally a writer who wrote Matchstick Men and Repo Men which had been adapted into movies and was producer of few movies as well. That unconventional way of watching was certainly a fresh thing, although it could actually be considered as flashbacks. For me personally, it was not the main attraction since I did not do it anyway. Even after I completed watching it, I was not tempted to re-watch the whole series based on the timeline.
This mini series only had 8 episodes which duration of 34 to 56 minutes. I personally liked the episodes Yellow (although the twist was not surprising), episode Violet that was quite dramatic and episode Red that was very intriguing. The cast were generally OK in their roles and I think Giancarlo Esposito was very good (particularly in episode Pink that felt like black comedy) and Rufus Sewell was equally good. Jai Courtney was also convincing in portraying such an obnoxious guy.
Overall this is a pretty entertaining heist mini series with a fresh way of story telling providing audience the option to watch in their own preference of order. I quite enjoyed the heist and the story leading to it, but I would probably be more satisfied if it was a bit more complicated. Those who like heist story might find this one a bit simple, especially if you compare with another heist series also available in Netflix that was so grand and spectacular with lots of action, drama and engaging characters. Nevertheless, to my opinion it is still something worthwhile to watch. Besides it is a limited series where I did not have to worry of having cliffhanger ending.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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