Hit & Run, the review of the new Netflix thriller series!
Hit & Run
A weekend full of international action and intrigue on Netflix is expected with the arrival of the new thriller series Hit & Run. Set between New York and Tel Aviv, this spy thriller landed on the platform on Friday 6 August, with all 9 episodes of the series.Hit & Run is capable of grabbing attention right from the trailer and its authors hopes for the success of the series increase. Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz are the same writers of Fauda, a well-known Israeli television series and winner of several awards between 2016 and 2018 at the Ophir Awards organized by the Israeli Academy of Cinema and Television. Also at their fiano are Dawn Prestwich and Nicol Yorkin, two of the producers and writers of the well-known medical drama Chicago Hope, winner of an Emmy Award in 1997 for Best Drama Series.
But the indisputable experience of the four will suffice. authors to ensure that Hit & Run is up to the Netflix catalog?
The spoiler-free plot
The new thriller of the streaming giant opens with Segev Azulai, the protagonist , inside the New Yor High Security Prison, k Sing Sing. The series, however, almost immediately takes a step back in time and tells us about the quiet life of the tour guide Segev and how she is upset due to the tragic car accident in which her wife becomes involved. Azulai, however, has not always been a guide. With a past in the Israeli Special Forces and as a mercenary in Mexico, Segev does not seem to believe the randomness of the incident in which Danielle died and begins to investigate further when he discovers that his wife's alleged killers have been released and managed to return to home.Together with his cousin, a young policewoman, and his ex Naomi Hicks, a journalist from New York, Segev then begins a manhunt following the few and confused tracks he manages to find, thus opening the doors on a dense web of intrigue between the United States and Israel. Unfortunately for him, however, the clues he discovers only throw even more confusion and mystery around the life of his deceased wife, a life full of secrets and half-truths that he kept hidden from the former soldier.
The cast
One of the writers of Hit & Run, he didn't stop at just writing. Lior Raz, in addition to having signed the script, is also the face of the protagonist Segev Azulai, with whom he shares a part of the past. In fact, once he finished high school, he enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces. He then became an operational soldier of the elite counter-terrorism unit known as Sayeret Duvdevan, and served in the same as a reserve for twenty years.A little curiosity about his military career is that after finishing his military service he was hired as Arnold Shwarznegger's bodyguard! It is not known whether it was this work that triggered his love for cinema, but once he returned to Israel after this experience, he began studying acting at Nissan Nativ Drama School in Tel Aviv.
Alongside Lior Raz we can also find other big names to support him. Among the best known, we undoubtedly have Gregg Henry, who thanks to his role in Jason Bourne is not new to political intrigues and espionage. Famous for taking part in major TV series such as CSI and NCIS, he will also have a role in the upcoming Blade Runner anime series: Black Lotus (the new trailer for which you can find here). But perhaps the most attentive Marvel fans will know him for playing Peter Quill's grandfather in the first two Guardians of the Galaxy films!
Sanaa McCoy Lathan, despite having taken part in several successful films such as Alien vs Predator, Contagion and Now You See Me 2, is probably best known for having lent her voice to several characters in internationally known TV series: in her curriculum we can find titles such as Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and the animated series by DC Harley Quinn.
A swinging rhythm
A cast worthy of respect, therefore, which however is not enough to fill some gaps that the series presents. Although the Hit & Run intro abundantly winks at Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan aired on Amazon Prime Video, and the genre is indeed in line with John Krasinski's American thriller, we can't help but notice several discrepancies.Although the thriller component is widely developed, the rhythm of the series fails to create a level of suspense that keeps the viewer in suspense, eager to find out what will happen next . At different moments in the various episodes of Hit & Run we have drops in rhythm that come to weigh on the progress of the story, resulting almost inconsistent and vain at the end of the series.
The plot of the thriller is interspersed with some interludes of private life of various recurring characters, who however risk diverting attention from the main trend. Nevertheless, the series is appreciable and the thriller part seems to be developed in a consistent and conscious way, probably also thanks to the previous collaboration between Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff.
The technical level
Also if Hit & Run does not bring any innovation in the processing techniques used to shoot the episodes, it cannot be said that the camera movements are not suitable for the thriller genre. The action scenes are well shot and, consequently, credible while not totally capturing the viewer.Undoubtedly the budget for a series is vastly different than that of a film that must aim all about a few action sequences, but they could have emphasized the show more with a different post production. The color, that is the treatment that is given to a video once finished and edited, fails to enhance the various scenes, but is actually too dark and without much contrast.
