Prisoner Review: Kapow! Boom! Shooty-Shooty! What Stupid Fun This Is
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in Prisoner, a six-part action thriller about a prison guard and a contract killer handcuffed together and on the run from a super evil crime syndicate. It is silly, but it is fun.
The setup is simple. We first meet prison guard Amber (Izuka Hoyle) as she says goodbye to her baby, leaves him with stay-at-home dad Olly (Finn Bennett), and rejoins her team after six months of maternity leave. On her first day back, she volunteers for an extra overtime job: transporting a special prisoner from an isolated hideaway to the Old Bailey. To make it clear something will go wrong, she puts a family photo on the van's windshield shade.
Meanwhile, viewers learn repeatedly from a large group of men in white shirts and one woman, Josephine (Catherine McCormack), whose character description likely read "Hardbitten divorcee. Takes no prisoners." They are the National Crime Unit, led by Alex (Eddie Marsan), and have spent seven years trying to bring down the Pegasus Crime Syndicate's head, Harrison Dempsey (Brían F. O'Byrne). His trial hinges on the testimony of one man: Tibor Stone (Tahar Rahim), a prolific contract killer with 47 confirmed kills and Type 3 diabetes.
Amber transports Tibor, but an ambush occurs. Kapow! Boom! Shooty-shooty! The van overturns, and Amber handcuffs herself to Tibor to prevent his escape. A splinter of Tilda Swinton named Nina (Leonie Benesch) pursues them relentlessly.
From there, the series becomes a mass of action set pieces, insulin shots under unlikely circumstances, an arrogant Dempsey heir, wounds patched without anaesthetic, ethical dilemmas for Amber, suspected moles in the NCU, and an unusually high ratio of weak performances unable to salvage a bad script. It looks slick, but who has the energy to care about characters or sense? It is an action movie that compresses the basics but misses the details. Two and a half stars, but the half fell into a plot hole and cannot be saved. Prisoner airs on Sky Atlantic and is available on Now.
