This Australian cop thriller delivers just what new talent should
Critical Incident ★★★½
Stan, Monday
Take it as a compliment when I say that I was not familiar with the work of those headlining this lit fuse Australian drama. Neither creator Sarah Bassiuoni nor leads Akshay Khanna and Zoe Boe have a slew of prominent credits, and that contributes to the contemporary kick of this policing thriller set in Sydney’s western suburbs. While it has a propulsive plot that rarely abates, even when it perhaps occasionally should, this six-part limited series delivers what new talent should: a sense of the here and now.
With a mixture of procedural detail and street hassles, Critical Incident overlays two parallel worlds. Senior Constable Zilficar “Zil” Ahmed (Khanna) is a young, capable police officer working out of Blacktown station – his nickname is “Poster Boy”, because his picture is on promotional material emphasising the force’s inclusiveness. Dalia Thun (Boe) is a high school student living in a group care home, hypervigilant of even the hint of violence. When another foster child snaps in the next room her fight or flight instincts are painfully palpable.
Akshay Khanna as Senior Constable Ahmed in Critical Incident: parallel worlds.Credit: Stan
When Zil is on plain clothes duty, eyes peeled for a female suspect who assaulted his friend and colleague, Sandra Ali (Roxie Mohebbi), a radio description matches the nearby Dalia. He moves to apprehend her, she panics and flees. On a crowded train platform a bystander is knocked onto the track as a train approaches, to the horror of both, and the show’s title is explained with the arrival of detective Edith Barcelos (Simone Kessell), who is tasked with determining whether “procedure” was followed.
Bassiuoni sharply captures the fractious divide between police and young people, beginning with a house party Dalia attends that veers into violence when Zil and his fellow officers try to wind it up. The sequence is impressively staged and assembled by lead director Neil Sharma, but it also contains a key concept: the roles played by those involved overwhelm individual hopes. Teens hate the cops for harassing them, cops have seen enough to suspect teens. Good intentions, and well-meaning policies, struggle against that stand-off.
Zoe Boe in Critical Incident: its propulsive plot rarely abates.Credit: Stan
As senior officers, the media, and the police union circle, Zil and Dalia are both traumatised and nudged into roles of adversaries. It’s easier for Zil to punish Dalia with onerous bail conditions than it is for him to reach out. There is a slew of surrounding storylines, including Dalia’s relationship with a drug dealer Hayden Broadis (Jai Waetford) under police scrutiny, but the show’s core is the harsh bond forged between Zil and Dalia. Neither is fully innocent nor completely culpable, neither has a clean way out. That’s the most tragic of procedures.
The Instigators ★★½
Apple TV+, Friday
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck constantly needle each other in The Instigators.Credit: AP
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck have needled each other onscreen as far back as 1997’s Good Will Hunting, but their chemistry never really registers in this lacklustre heist comedy about a pair of mismatched thieves. As a contrasting duo recruited for an armed robbery – Damon’s Rory is a depressed former marine and Affleck’s Cobby is a chirpy ex-con – the pair try to put some emotional weight on their characters, but nothing here significantly shifts the needle.
The script, written by Affleck and Chuck Maclean, has some droll bits: as the thieves prep to rob the Boston mayor’s election victory party, Rory has to be reminded not to take notes. The duo gets a third wheel once the robbery goes awry, with Rory insisting they kidnap his therapist, Dr Donna Rivera (Hong Chau), to help them. She offers some ironic therapeutic conversation as they flee the corrupt mayor, the cops and a vengeful underworld boss.
The supporting cast has a surplus of overly qualified but underused actors, including Alfred Molina, Toby Jones and Ving Rhames. The surprise is that director Doug Liman, fresh from the no-holds-barred Road House reboot, can’t generate any excitement aside from a pair of tidy car chases. The bond that develops between Rory and Cobby is orderly despite the chaos around them. There’s a difference between understated and anaemic.
Strange Way of Life
Binge
Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke in Strange Way of Life.
The masterful Pedro Almodóvar puts aside Madrid’s funky fringes for the 19th-century wild west in this idiosyncratic but instructive queer-themed short film. Traversing multiple frontiers, the arthouse titan casts Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal respectively as Sheriff Jake and Silva, ageing gunslingers and former lovers whose reunion is both bittersweet and suspiciously timed. It’s a gorgeously stylised brief encounter, complete with flashbacks and all kinds of loaded imagery. The half-hour running time feels right – there wasn’t a feature in this mix of the arch and the melancholic, but the short suffices.
Kleo (season 2)
Netflix
Jella Haase (left) as the anti-heroine of Netflix’s peppy eight-part series Kleo.Credit: Netflix
One of the surprises of 2022, the first season of this German action-thriller, set during and just after the Cold War, filled a Killing Eve-sized hole. Funniest at its bleakest, the show started as a vehicle for the title character’s revenge on the East German spies who made her into an assassin and then betrayed her. In the new episodes, Jella Haase’s Kleo remains a daunting, unpredictable prospect, but now the old order has collapsed and pre-reunified Berlin is a smorgasbord for grifters and spies alike. Still bloody, still enjoyable.
Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown
Disney+
Cult leader Jim Jones led 900 of his followers to suicide in 1978.Credit: AP
Made with grim focus by director Marian Mohamed, this three-part documentary series is a step-by-step recreation of the tragic final day in 1978 of the Peoples Temple, the compound in Guyana where cult leader Jim Jones and more than 900 followers died in a suicide ritual after a visiting delegation of US politicians and media were ambushed by gunmen on Jones’ orders. Survivors from all sides offer harrowing testimony, but amid the true crime horror is a more unsettling question: how did Jones attract and command so many people?
Late Night with the Devil
AMC+
Late Night with the Devil tells the story of a talk show derailed by demonic possession.
A homage to the extremes of late-night television in the 1970s – there’s definitely some of The Don Lane Show in the DNA of this film – the latest horror feature from Australian filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes (100 Bloody Acres) is a tale of demonic possession overtaking a live broadcast. American actor David Dastmalchian (Dune) inhabits the role of talk show host Jack Delroy, whose supernatural-themed live episode swiftly gets out of hand when sniping between the guests gives way to supernatural chaos. Assured in their craft, the Cairnes brothers deliver fulsome ratings satire and sharp scares.
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