Brief Story Line
Dr. Alex Cross (Aldis Hodge - Black Adam, Leverage TV series etc), a Forensic Psychologist was working as homicide detective in DC with his partner John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa - It Chapter Two, Boy Kills World etc). Cross was struggling with his personal life and had to have help from his grandmother Regina (Juanita Jennings - Meet the Browns TV series etc) to take care of his children Damon (Caleb Elijah) and Jannie (Melody Hurd).
Alex was beginning to have a relationship with Elle (Samantha Walkes), a director of Non profit organization who introduced him to some high powered people including the very wealthy Ed Ramsey (Ryan Eggold - The Blacklist TV series, New Amsterdam TV series etc). Ed himself was taking an interest on a young woman named Shannon Witmer (Eloise Mumford - Fifty Shades trilogy etc) whom he met through dating app.
When a Black Lives Matter activist was found dead, the police chief Anderson (Jennifer Wigmore - Malory Towers TV series etc) assigned Alex and John to the case to ease the public tension. As they dig further and with the help from FBI agent Kayla Craig (Alona Tal - Supernatural TV series etc), they found the case as not so straight forward. And to make things further complicated, Alex also had to deal with the stalking on him and his family which might relate to his past case.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in the first season of this series.
End of Brief Story Line
OK, got to admit the reason I was interested with the series was due to the name Alex Cross. It was so long ago since I saw the character in two different movies Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001) where he was portrayed by Morgan Freeman, but I do remember that he was an excellent detective and the case was interesting. So obviously I was intrigued in finding out how this series would fare with a younger person playing him. I never saw the 2012 version titled Alex Cross starring Tyler Perry, so I do not have opinion on that (it was disappointing critically and commercially).
Anyway the series felt a bit slow to me at first with a lot of emphasis on Alex's personal struggle and the major case seemed to be put out to reflect the recent condition in the US. To be frank I was feeling a bit bored in the first two episodes and only towards the end of the second episode that I became more excited. Subsequently as the investigation got deeper and revealed more information, I thought the story got better (even if sometimes the pace was inconsistent) till the culmination in the finale. There were few surprising twists here, but the only one that truly shocked me was in seventh episode. The first season had 8 episodes with duration of a little bit over 50 minutes. My most favorite was the 5th episode as we got to see Alex go head to head with the villain in an amazing psychological mind game and the 7th was also great for me.
The series was based on James Patterson's novel series about the character Alex Cross which have already had more than 30 titles published by the time I wrote this post. I noticed in the closing credit that he was also one of the Executive producer. It was created by Ben Watkins (creator of Hand of God TV series and producer of Burn Notice TV series). I also saw that Aldis Hodge was credited as one of the producers. Btw, he was praised for his performance and I thought he did a good job portraying a stressed out Alex Cross with a lot of rage in him. The rest of the cast were OK as well and personally to me Ryan Eggold gave a wonderful performance with his amazing facial expression swift changes.
In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were some support cast such as Sharon Taylor (Bad Blood TV series etc) as Lieutenant Massey, Karen Robinson (Schitt's Creek TV series etc) as Damon's piano teacher Miss Nancy, Johnny Ray Gill (Underground TV series etc) as Bobby Trey and several others whom I was not too familiar with. In fact, other than Hodge, Eggold and Alona Tal, the only other name I know was Isaiah Mustafa that I did not recognize (probably due to his big built and beard). Critics seem to enjoy this as proven by the favorable rating while Prime Video was so confident with the series that it was already renewed for second season ahead of its release. So we should be seeing Cross again very soon.
Overall this was an interesting series. I like the case investigation, the psychological mind games and the twist, though the action was pretty average to me. The ending was pretty conclusive and I think quite satisfying. However, I was not really happy with the first two episodes and the rather inconsistent pace in the middle. I hope the second season would improve in consistency with a more complex case. So if you like crime thriller series based on popular novel by James Patterson, then you can certainly give this a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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