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Sunday, January 17, 2021

Lupin, Part 1: Suave Crime



Lupin's five episodes -- Part 1 -- were easy to binge last night on Netflix.  The French series is a perfect caper revenge story, with elements ranging from Bondian combat on a train to Mission Impossible masks to the dynamics of any number of French cop series such as Spiral.

Omar Sy is the suave, brilliant Assane Diop, determine to seek revenge for his father Babakar, found hanging when Diop was a teenager.   The villain is Pellegrini, a millionaire wheeler and dealer, who is responsible for Babakar'a death, and may have killed him.  He's not taking Assane's capers lightly, and in fact has sent a hitman after him.

The third element in this narrative are the Parisian police.  On the one hand, they're after Diop.  On the other hand, they have a varying series of motives, ranging from wanting to nab Diop as a con man to working for Pellegrini.   Diop has to stay one step ahead of all of that.

His allies and family (wife and son) are also in the sights of Pellegrini's hitman.  Diop's smile and smarts can get him into all kinds of places, and out of all kinds of predicaments, but they're not as effective against a cool, professional killer.   Part 1 ends with a double cliffhanger -- about which I'll say no more -- but I will mention I would've liked to see Part 2, and am not a fan of Netflix's occasional practice of splitting up a TV series season into two parts, as it did for the revived Unsolved Mysteries.

I'll be back here with a review of Part 2, as soon as it's up on Netflix.


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