- Network: Sundance , Sundance Channel , SundanceTV , Sundance TV
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 12, 2015
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Critic Reviews
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It would be impossible to deliver something as bleak, unsettling, and compelling as [David Bowie's] “Blackstar” has posthumously become, but more often than not, when it counts, The Last Panthers delivers.
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The Last Panthers is dense and can be hard to follow, jumping around not just in location but in time, introducing more and more characters and complications as it goes. But it pays off.
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[A] gripping, smartly written, dark and beautifully directed new French series.
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With so much talent at hand, from the performances to the direction to the editing, The Last Panthers ends up making the familiar feel fresh, allowing the equally thrilling and melancholic subject matter to unfurl with surprising effectiveness.
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Style doesn't sink the story or make the details and milieu feel any less authentic. It will help the viewer to have a high tolerance for suspense because in every strand of the story there is a continual threat of violence and because most of the characters are on balance sympathetic.
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Bemused Hurt and quiet, searching Morton do terrifically with the material, which shares with its theme song, David Bowie's "Blackstar," a sense of remove and oddity.
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Much of what transpires comes off as an homage to complex dramas like “The Wire” and “The Shield,” and though The Last Panthers isn’t in the league of those American classics, it’s a credible and illuminating look at the movement of cash, guns and lucrative contracts in the interconnected Europe of today.
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It may require concentration to savor all its moving parts. But that’s not exactly work, considering the reward.
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This would be a better, easier-to-follow series if it allowed itself to be direct from time to time, but it will reward those who like their television dense and brooding.
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The series can be pretty dark, but it’s worth investigating.
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Fine acting can't overcome some wildly melodramatic plot turns and on-the-nose dialogue/ Fun for Europhiles, boring for everyone else. [15 Apr 2016, p.47]
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Like last year’s Netflix original series Bloodline, The Last Panthers requires a bit of patience before it can catch fire--yet when it does, the flames are downright inextinguishable.
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While it succeeds nicely on some of these fronts, at times managing to be gripping and thought provoking, it fails to cohere on other fronts, as writer Jack Thorne crams too many characters and too much story into a half-dozen hours.
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There are few grace notes and no real surprises beneath the pumped-up topical melodrama. The Last Panthers's aesthetic is as numbingly generic as most of its characters, favoring that ashtray-gray sheen that many filmmakers prefer when staging European crime stories.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 14
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Mixed: 4 out of 14
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Negative: 2 out of 14
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Apr 23, 2016