No one ever told me that I would fall in love with a movie, and other movies won't really make sense to me again after watching. I found The Blacklist on my own early last year; no one recommended it to me this time around, and ever since I finished watching it from season one to ten, I have been searching for a seasonal movie that will beat it, but I am yet to see one. This movie is out of here, and the characters used were built for the movie.
I thought it was a newly released series when I stumbled on it, not knowing that the first season was released in 2013/2014, and it has a total of twenty two episodes, long but with a strong concentration that will make you ask for more. I will say it's the best debut series I've ever come across from all my movie watches on crime shows.
The show began with the person who made me fall in love with the movie, James Spader, who played a very brilliant role of Raymond “Red” Reddington, walking directly and surrendering himself to one of the FBI buildings after long years of hiding. He wasn't afraid to surrender being the number one most wanted criminal on the FBI list for decades. But trust me, he didn't just surrender just like that; he was expecting something in return in exchange that he would be providing the special secret task names of criminals around the world that no one even knows exist, and that he will be working directly with just a person, a woman from the task force known as Elizabeth Keen, a new profiler. , she was newly assigned to the FBI task force, and he continued that she's the only one she will work with despite claiming that they have never met.
Saying that they had never met and insisting that she's the only one he will be talking to got me and put me in a position that kept me watching the whole season. Raymond was met with a secret and undisclosed signed deal with the government, and he kept supplying the task force with new criminals on his personal blacklist, even some who were directly involved with the government. Each blacklist was either assassins, smugglers, government officials, scientists, or terrorists that not anyone has in a way paid attention to, while slowly in the background, a lot of questions build about Elizabeth's husband, Tom, who also took on an identity of who he is not.
The first half of season 1 leans fairly formulaic, but after that, the midseason builds towards Berlin, another big threat who Tom, in a way, works for. Then it shifted to Anslo Garrick, a former work partner of Raymond who came to attack the FBI black site and tried to assassinate Raymond, which built so much tension and confidence around the season. But one thing that got me questioning that episode was, how can an FBI black site be attacked just as easily like that without an immediate response...well.
However, towards the finale of season 1, Tom's secret was, in a way, discovered by Elizabeth, and Berlin was already planning his next threat, which was continued in the next season in an exciting, tense, and dangerous situation instead of a tidy resolution.
Like I said, Raymond alone, not even the other captivating characters made this movies a worthy of the watch and time for me because at some point, I was beginning to imagine how a criminal, most wanted man on the list of the FBI for years can be so calm, collective, unsettling at some point, theatrical in a way just few TV villains have managed to be.
I won't lie, the few people I recommended this series for came back to tell me how much the loved it because it was so addictive, those it was from season one to ten, but I have watched it twice and I still can't get enough of it.
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2920128/mediaviewer/rm1662625280/?ref_=tt_ov_i)
Other images are screenshots from my movie player
Rating: 100/100
