Since the moment he emerged from the womb (possibly while already chomping on a vast stogie), Arnold Schwarzenegger has strived to conquer everything he sets his sights on. Whether it be using his iron will to dominate body building competitions, to becoming the biggest star in Hollywood despite having a name longer than most movie titles, Arnold even threw his hat into the ring of politics, becoming the governator of California. An impressive list of achievements, to be sure, but the latest mountain he has chosen to climb may prove to be his most elusive yet – that of the fickle world of streaming.
Lest we forget, Arnie’s never done an actual TV show before (The Apprentice notwithstanding), choosing to let the cinema screen show off his chiseled physique; but due to his team-up with Netflix (they’ve also got a documentary of him out too), he’s finally tackling the small screen the way only he can – with more explosions and quips you can shake an Austrian oak at.
Luke Brunner is a CIA Agent who, due to his impressive tenure, is described by his handler, Barry, as “the fastest 65 year old white guy on the planet”, but once he’s completed his most recent mission, the party is over as he finally retires from a life of guns, assassinations and beer steins that spray poison. While there’s the small pang of regret, Luke is hoping that finally not having to lie about his entire life means that he can rekindle the passion with his ex-wife despite being divorced for fifteen years and strengthen the relationship between him and his daughter, Emma.
However, retirement may prove to be a something of a cruel reality check as he finds that his former spouse may be seeing someone new and he’s being bothered by Barry to take up one more mission to liberate a undercover agent codenamed Panda from the compound of an arms dealer in Guyana.
Begrudgingly, Luke accepts, if for no other reason than he feels partially responsible for the rise of arms dealer Bolo Polonia as it was he who secretly murdered the guy’s dad under the guise of a fatherly friend.
However, while entering the compound and reconnecting with Bolo is easy enough and he discovers that the weapon he’s trying to sell is an undetectable nuclear weapon without even trying; the part of the mission that proves to be the most difficult is discovering the true identity of Agent Panda.
You guessed it – Panda turns out to be his daughter Emma, who didn’t know that he was a super-spy any more than he knew that she was one too. However, while Luke and Emma have decades of family drama to iron out, they have to take out an operative who knows Emma’s true identity and get that nuke out of town before Bolo puts two and two together.
To get the best out of FUBAR, there’s a few things that are worth remembering as you settle down to watch it with the first being that the whole show is obviously an unsubtle reworking of James Cameron’s True Lies, which also saw Arnie negotiate familial strife while snapping the necks of international terrorists as he struggles to balance the two, remarkably different lives. The other thing that you have to realise is that compared to other, recent, more po-faced streaming-based spy shows like Citadel and The Night Agent, FUBAR might as well be an impossibly glib cartoon of a show where everyone has a lightning fast wit and the matter of Luke’s age is tackled as about realistically as Roger Moore in A View To A Kill.
If you’re cool with the idea of a silly, throwback action series that seems to have wilfully turned its back on the more serious tone of action extravaganzas like No Day To Die, FUBAR is actually quite a sweet return to a time when not every action flick had to make constant reference to its hero’s age in order to justify some outlandish setpiece.
Oh sure, Arnie’s age is mentioned many times (well, technically – he’s actually 75 in real life), but only in the context of teasing jokes – a suggestion that he sould go to a Wilford Brimley film festival is particularly inventive one – and the setting up of his life in general. When it comes to the action, Luke Brunner is entirely capable of suddenly leaping from one moving jeep to another without so much of a single complaint of creaky knees despite the fact that I could sneeze weird and instantly throw my back out.
Basically put, Luke Brunner is essentially something of a walking, talking, greatest hits package for Schwarzenegger that includes the age-appropriate gurning of an Expendables movie or The Last Stand, the exagerated spy work of True Lies or Eraser and a hint of the paternal angst of Maggie, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the legendary actor is hardly stretched by the material. But then, I think the only stretching the show is willing to do is that of the audience’s disbelief as the entire episode is wrapped in a glossy, comic book sheen that is far more interested in goofy, Hollywood fantasy than the measured grit of a Jason Bourne film. Emma’s fake identity as a hard-drinking, smoking soldier who can out-brawl men twice her size for fun is about as convincing as some of the so-called “teenagers” seen in shows like Riverdale, but convincing isn’t what this show is ultimately about.
Top Gun: Maverick’s Monica Barbaro does enough to let the belated outpouring of bitterness at her father stick and the trio of Travis Van Winkle, Fortune Feimster and Milan Carter, keep the quickfire barbs a’coming as Luke’s mismatched team while on the flipside of the cast, fellow Terminator and former Ghost Rider, Gabriel Luna sketches out a potentially worthy villain in the form of Boro, an antagonist described by one of Luke’s team as making Jim Jones look like Jim Henson.
It’s early doors yet, but as an undemanding slice of episodic action that barely scratches the mold, let alone breaks it, FUBAR is pretty decent – but whether it can raise itself above the realms of fun, but plastic, action and some truly chuckle worthy banter is something that remains to be seen.
Remarkably unremarkable.
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 