Citadel on Prime Video Review: Did ChatGPT write this mediocre spy thriller?
Despite all the hullabaloo it tried to create, Citadel falls short... very very short of whatever it is that it promised. A rehashed mishmash of all the greatest hits of the spy genre (James Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission: Impossible, real-world CIA politics, even Pathaan some would say), Citadel premiered on Prime Video with a first season comprising six episodes.
And much like a cliched secret agency’s operative, each episode of Citadel is emotionless, bland and probably brainwashed (in thinking that no spy franchises existed before Citadel). Even though the Russo Brothers were going out with the marketing, they only serve as executive producers with the thriller actually created by Josh Applebaum (who previously wrote the far superior fourth Mission: Impossible film) and David Weil (whose future projects include a series on the FTX crypto scandal which hopefully will not be as bland as Citadel).
Even though the Russos aren’t directly involved this time, it seems like anything that they get their hands on after Avengers: Endgame becomes the most formulaic snoozefest. Just look at The Gray Man (more specifically the letdown of a role that Dhanush got).
ALSO READ: Netflix spent $200 million on The Gray Man, cast Dhanush to woo India. It still wasn't enough
As one would already know thanks to Prime Video’s aggressive marketing campaigns, Citadel stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden as agents of the titular spy agency. But with Madden’s Mason character undergoing an amnesia episode much like Jason Bourne, he must regain his footing in the agency which is now dealing with rogue agents and a global terrorist conspiracy. Also thrown in the middle are the struggles that secret agents have in leading normal family lives.
Sounds like your average basic spy thriller? Well, wait till you hear Chopra Jonas’s Nadia say, “You need to remember the past, to save the future. Are you ready?”
Thrown in the cast is Stanley Tucci (yes, even he’s here) as Bernard, a strategic operations guy reminiscent of James Bond’s M and whoever else it is who talks to spies on their bluetooth earpiece.
Lesley Manville (who has had delightful parts in Phantom Thread and Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) serves as the main villain Dahlia Archer, just your average unhinged global terrorist who later becomes a morally gray character for her ideological reasons to go against Citadel.
Mediocrity is Citadel’s worst drawback. As would be evident if you’ve read this far, everything from the characters to the writing is fairly simple and offers little to nothing new to add to the already oversaturated spy genre. Even Daniel Craig has given up playing James Bond and we are already getting a seventh Mission: Impossible film this July.
Nobody probably asked for Citadel and nobody probably will after this fairly ordinary debut season (no matter how much the Russos will try to build its universe). Season 1 anyway ended with a cliffhanger (and the story continues in the already-announced Season 2), opening the potential for a spin-off Citadel: Diana that will release next year. Also, let’s not forget Raj and DK are anyway working on Citadel: India with Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu! Phew. That’s quite a lot of ambition for an unambitious franchise.
In Citadel’s defence, some of the action sequences are fairly decent. There are some stealth operations involved that would keep you hooked but then whenever Madden and Chopra open their mouths, the curse of mediocrity strikes back. There’s hardly any chemistry as Madden is yet again playing a straight-faced character like Game of Thrones’s Robb Stark and Eternals’s Ikarios. But while he was still well-cast in those two roles, he could have been a little more un-robotic in Citadel. As it is, the story feels like it’s shot out of a ChatGPT prompt on writing a spy thriller. We don’t need anymore robots.
Meanwhile, Chopra looks convincing in her fight sequence but when it comes to dialogue delivery, it feels like she’s acting in a promotional ad for the spy agency instead of doing anything else. If you needed a better spy show starring Chopra, just go for her American debut Quantico instead. Quantico itself had its fair share of cliches and flaws but was still more enjoyable than this big-budget mess.
Even in Madden’s case, you can very well binge on his Netflix political thriller Bodyguard instead of Citadel. And no, this is not a paid partnership to promote Netflix over Prime; Bodyguard is just more intense and gripping even if it delves into the British PM’s assassination attempts instead of a global terror threat.
Multiple reports suggest that Citadel was made at a budget of $200 million - or Rs 1,600 crore. It might have ultimately been a moneymaker for Prime in terms of viewership but in terms of quality, the budget doesn’t seem worth it.
In the Citadel finale, a character talks about an air missile that is programmed with the wrong coordinates, leading to the loss of numerous civilian lives. Much like this missile, Citadel is a big-budget misfire that has no regard for the civilians watching it.
We’re going with 1 out of 5 stars for Citadel.