In From The Cold, a Netflix spy thriller, stands apart in a crowded genre for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its willingness to give fans a badass, butt-kicking protagonist who also happens to be a single mother in her 40s attempting to be a decent parent to her teenage daughter. In From The Cold finds central heroine Jenny Franklin managing an angry teen, a looming divorce, and a nonexistent social life long before her hidden background as a Soviet secret agent comes back to bother her.
As if that weren’t enough, she also possesses a superhuman — but medically dangerous — ability to shape-shift, which she’ll need to use to thwart a terrorist group’s evil ambitions.
Sure, it may sound far-fetched, but most working parents will undoubtedly have a lot in common with Jenny, a character played by Margarita Levieva during the show’s eight-episode first season. Whether Jenny is battling her way through a squadron of lethal assassins or counselling her daughter through the latest teen drama, Levieva’s portrayal grounds the part in something pleasantly familiar despite all of the high-stakes espionage and sci-fi twists of the plot.
Plot of In From the Cold
Another man on a bus is overpowered by whatever that force is and gets into a fight with someone, causing him to be pummelling into a coma. A business woman stabs a young mother in a public plaza, and the crowd grabs her.
A US young skating team is also arriving in Madrid for a tournament. Jenny Franklin (Margarita Levieva) and her daughter Becca are driving separately from the rest of the crew (Lydia Fleming). Becca, like other teenagers, is humiliated by her mother’s overprotectiveness, and her only teammate is Maddie Davis (Lola Mae Loughran).
Jenny gets gassed and wakes up in a room with a CIA operative named Chauncey Lu (Cillian O’Sullivan) after she leaves Becca to go grab her daughter a tampon from a store near the hotel. He believes Jenny used to be Anya, a Russian spy known as “The Whisperer” who was responsible for a number of assassinations across Europe before leaving right after the state intelligence system collapsed in the 1990s. She rejects it at first, but when her life is endangered, her long-dormant combat abilities resurface.
Also Read, All of Us Are Dead: Another Korean Movie Reigning Netflix
She’s been knocked unconscious and returned to the hotel, where Becca believes she got lost. Jenny is examining her injuries when Chauncey arrives. He leads her across the hall to his headquarters and introduces her to Chris Clark (Charles Brice), his technical specialist. Her first assignment is to obtain an eye scan from someone who has access to a military hospital. There is a gunrunner there who is linked to the three persons who randomly assaulted people. Jenny believes she is too old to be a honey trap, but Chauncey disagrees. She has no option; if she does not comply, he will imprison her on espionage accusations.
Jenny’s initially hesitant return to earlier events she believed she had left behind, according to Levieva, provided her with enough to relate to. Levieva, a former Russian rhythmic gymnast, emigrated to the United States at an early age and found herself reconnecting with her training as a gymnast and dancer for her depiction of Jenny.
Jenny’s past is revealed in the series premiere episode when she fights her way out of a building through a seemingly never-ending parade of intelligence agents, disarming and incapacitating one attacker after another in an impressively choreographed, lengthy fight sequence that spans multiple rooms, stairwells, and hallways.
It’s uncommon for Netflix to release a genuine stinker of a series, one riddled with awful language, sloppy action, and a premise that doesn’t feel entirely plausible. In From The Cold is one of the worst Netflix original programmes we’ve seen in a long time, owing to creator Adam Glass’s mistaken belief that he’s painting with a little brush when, in fact, he’s using very wide strokes.
In addition to everything else that makes this series difficult to watch, the narrative is extremely confused. Not only does Chauncey not explain how the CIA found Jenny down, but her abilities as the Whisperer aren’t properly explained. Then, of course, there’s Jenny’s shape-shifting into a large, muscular male at the end of the episode. Is this the talent that the CIA saw in the three persons who attacked other people at random earlier that day?
Oh, and there are flashbacks to Anya (Stasya Miloslavskaya) in Moscow in 1994. Maybe the aim is to demonstrate Anya’s abilities in action and how she gained whatever talents she possesses. But all we see is her collapsing.
In addition to everything else that makes this series difficult to watch, the narrative is extremely confusing. Not only does Chauncey not explain how the CIA found Jenny down, but her abilities as the Whisperer aren’t properly explained. Then, of course, there’s Jenny’s shape-shifting into a large, muscular male at the end of the episode. Is this the talent that the CIA saw in the three persons who attacked other people at random earlier that day?
Oh, and there are flashbacks to Anya (Stasya Miloslavskaya) in Moscow in 1994. Maybe the aim is to demonstrate Anya’s abilities in action and how she gained whatever talents she possesses. But all we see is her collapsing.
If In From The Cold wasn’t so absurd, we’d be OK with the clumsy writing and wooden performances. But it’s just absurd, and not in a nice way.
