Echo 3

The series does a great job of creating tension through desperation, and that includes wanting to know where this is going, and trusting that this series has unusual values. It’s thrilling, subversive action entertainment, or at the very least a potent reminder of how much excellent action doesn’t require easy heroics.

Tough, tense and thoughtful, this is a deeply grown-up thriller — and more compelling journalistic filmmaking from co-showrunner Mark Boal.

It gets a lot of mileage out of that crossroads of violence and need—how far people are willing to go to better their situation is something that should never be underestimated. And it reminds one of a theme that Boal has often explored in his projects before: In combat, everyone is a hero, and no one is a hero at the same time.

We’ll give Echo 3 the benefit of the doubt because it’s taking a more thoughtful and deliberate tack than most military shows. But boy, do things go pretty slowly to start.

What this action series, from The Hurt Locker Oscar winner Mark Boal, may lack in originality it compensates for with its grim intensity. [5 - 18 Dec 2022, p.5]

Essentially it’s an amalgam of The Deer Hunter, Band of Brothers, Phil and Grant’s sibling rivalry in EastEnders plus a sexy stay-at-home bride doomed to moon tearfully out of windows while her men straighten out Johnny Foreigner. Then something incredible happens. Amber, we abruptly learn, is not what she seems, but a protagonist in her own right.

Some members of the Colombian military and the rebel crew have personalities or hints of backstory, but not real characters. And at the same time, the various missions to rescue Amber are individually suspenseful without any overall momentum or cumulative tension-building. I’ll be curious to see if it all comes together as something truly good or just settles for well-meaning aspiration.

There simply isn’t enough characterization in the preceding episodes to justify a particularly deep investment in these people, one might feel largely ambivalent about Amber’s fate until halfway through the season—at which point the show, much like Amber, might be beyond saving

For all the ways that Boal’s writing on The Hurt Locker managed to be both engaging and more honest about the nature of war, this latest story just never has the sharpness to pull off either. There is a good narrative and thematic core hidden in the middle of Echo 3, but all of that promise gets drowned by too many detours that compromise its overall mission.