TL;DR – This is a perfectly okay introduction, but by attaching itself to this world, it wrote checks that it has so far been unable to cash.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

The Continental Review –

If there has been one world that has delighted me over the last decade, it has been John Wick and its universe. Indeed, I wrote a whole article on how it was a Masterclass in Visual Storytelling and Worldbuilding. The more we heard about this world, the more fascinated I was with it. However, prequels are always dicey propositions, as we see today.

So to set the scene, it is 1955 in New York City, and a young Winston is learning the hard life that can come from the world he is in. Years later, we find a world of sex, drugs, and club techno as the world sings in a new year. But that is not just any New Year’s Eve party. It is one held in The Continental, and as they countdown to ‘Happy New Year, ’ something goes boom. But there are some rules that you just don’t break. Now from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Well, if nothing else, the John Wick franchise is known for its action, so how does this first episode stand up? Well, it is a bit of a mixed bag. There are moments where it stands up to the best of the series. For example, we open on two different oners. The first was Frankie’s (Ben Robson) walk through the world, setting the scene for the battle to come, and then a bit later, we get a brawl up a staircase in the style of a reverse Atomic Blonde. This is probably the episode’s highlight, which does not bode well, given it comes at the start, but it did work very well. Another standout was Yen’s (Nhung Kate) brawl around a sleeping baby, where we get to show off all her physicality. However, for each of these that worked, we gain others that fall short, most notably the car chase, which is a pity.

Narratively speaking, the story is relatively boilerplate. You get the feeling that this is all about how Winston Scott (Colin Woodell) gets to run the New York Continental. That in itself could have been an exciting idea for a series, but it gets lost in all the other interconnected rubbish that piles up, much like the street corners they are filming on. It is such a rich world to draw from, but so much of this is average crime world stuff we have seen done to death elsewhere. None of this is helped by Mel Gibson just having no presence in any of the scenes he is in. I am not sure what happened there, but it is noticeable.

It often feels confused, much like the time when the show is set, dabbling in big ideas but not sure what it wants to say about them. You can feel them latch onto these self-referential moments to try and stay afloat. I think they try the Midnight Cowboy ‘I’m walking here’ homage twice in this episode alone. Worse still, the ‘Guns, lots of guns’ moment, which was clearly meant to be this big wow moment, but divorced from Keanu Reeves, that line means nothing, and it shows.

While I have been a bit negative here, I must clarify that it never gets truly bad, just average, which might be worse than bad for you but not for me. However, there were these moments throughout. When the universe emerged from under the grime, I wondered if they could make this show work. The first was when The Adjudicator (Katie McGrath) showed up and owned the scene. Which I should add that the scene also has a henchman with a kilt beating another man to death. The next was when KD (Mishel Prada) slipped into The Continental, and a new world appeared before her. There was actually some real tension here, which was a nice change.  

In the end, do we recommend The Continental: Brothers in Arms? No. Well, more: no, not yet. There is not a lot of this that rises to the level that John Wick has laid down. But that might just be because this first episode had to wade through all the exposition to set everything up. Some moments still give me hope, and I hope that moving forward, we could have a better part 2 or 3.      

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen The Continental yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Continental
Directed by – Albert Hughes
Written by – Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward & Shawn Simmons
Created by – Greg Coolidge, Kirk Ward & Shawn Simmons
Based On – John Wick by Derek Kolstad
Production/Distribution Companies – Last Man Standing Films, Cool-ish Productions, Resse Wernick Productions, King of Brockton Inc, Thunder Road Pictures, Lionsgate Television, Peacock & Amazon Prime.
Starring – Mel Gibson, Colin Woodell, Mishel Prada, Ben Robson, Hubert Point-du Jour, Nhung Kate, Jessica Allain, Ayomide Adegun, Jeremy Bobb & Peter Greene with Adam Shapiro, Katie McGrath, Claire Cooper, Patrick Bergin, Marina Mazepa, Mark Musashi & Kirk Ward and Chris Ryman, Matt Brewer, Roy Hu, Arnmundur Ernst Björnsson, Simon Wan, Sallay Garnett, Philip Philmar & Antonio Magro