It’s all about the Bro Code—and the immutable, devastating, and often tragic consequences that transpire when the Bro Code is broken.
If you watched the 2022 Amazon Prime Video action espionage thriller series “The Terminal List,” starring Chris Pratt as U.S. Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander James Reece, who sets out to avenge the murder of his family, you know the fate of Taylor Kitsch’s Ben Edwards, who was once Reece’s teammate and best friend before becoming a dark operative for the CIA’s Ground Branch. In the pulse-pounding (if occasionally convoluted) prequel series “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf,” we learn how Edwards lost his way, transforming from a gung-ho and highly decorated Navy SEAL Chief Special Warfare Operator to a deeply compromised, paramilitary operative who navigates ever murkier moral waters.
Kitsch brings genuine star power to a role custom-suited to his world-weary anti-hero skill set, and the steady barrage of set-piece action sequences is nearly at the level of a “Bourne” or Bond or “Mission: Impossible” film. Even though the minutiae of the late 2010s geopolitics sometimes stall the action and complicate the storylines, “The Terminal List: Dark Wolf” consistently brings the action and the boom factor, big time.
Is it an absolute necessity to have seen the original before taking in this prequel? No, but it will enhance and inform the viewing experience, as you’ll know the fates of Reece (Pratt appears in a few episodes), Edwards, and a handful of other characters who appear in both series. Co-created by Jack Carr (author of the bestselling “The Terminal List” novels) and its sister show’s creator-showrunner David DiGillio, “Dark Wolf” starts with a military funeral attended by Reece and Edwards, with Reece intoning in a gravelly voice-over, “What are we fighting for, when we step on that battlefield…when you ask an operator, a SEAL…we fight for each other, and when you’re a part of that brotherhood, every battle is about bringing your brothers home. Which is why it’s so hard to see them buried. And the only thing that’s worse is when you give up that brotherhood.”
Cut to seven years earlier, and an Allied Training Facility some 10 clicks outside of Mosul in Northern Iraq, with Edwards leading the efforts to train Peshmerga units in infantry skills, sniper training, counter-IED tactics, etc., so they’re better equipped to fight ISIS. The first of the impressively mounted action sequences is a tense and perilous prisoner exchange on a bridge that goes haywire in brutal and bloody fashion. Later in the premiere episode, Edwards disobeys direct orders and carries out a blood-spattered mission that might have been the right thing to do in the grand scheme—but results in Edwards and his fellow Navy SEAL, Lt. Raife Hastings (a physically imposing and screen-commanding Tom Hopper), being “stripped of their birds,” i.e., losing the SEAL Trident and designated for reassignment behind a desk somewhere.
Enter the outstanding Robert Wisdom as Jed Haverford, a grizzled and mysterious CIA spymaster who navigates in the shadows and heads up a multi-national team that works outside the established rules of intelligence agencies. (Wonder if any of ‘em have crossed paths with some of the Impossible Mission Force gang over the years.) The smooth-talking, unnervingly calm Haverford recruits Edwards and Hastings to potentially join a squad that includes Mohammed “Mo” Farooq (Dar Salim), an Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) officer; Mossad veteran Eliza Perash (Rona-Lee Shimon); computer expert Tal Varon (Shiraz Tzarfati); and the American operatives “Ish” (Michael Ealy) and Jules (Luke Hemsworth). In what amounts to an audition to join the team, Edwards and Hastings carry out a mission inside a thumping nightclub in Austria (“I f****** hate techno,” quips Edwards) in a brilliantly executed sequence that echoes certain elements of “Casino Royale.”
Over the course of seven action-jammed episodes, with bangers such as “Hells Bells” by AC/DC, “Sober” by Tool and “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd on the soundtrack, “Dark Wolf” pinballs through Europe and the Middle East, with stops in Geneva, Zurich, Tehran, Tel Aviv and Munich, among other locales. Military authenticity is a cornerstone of the series, with former Rangers and SEALs providing both creative and technical expertise. Shootouts, explosions, and hand-to-hand combat scenes pack a visceral punch, even as the series indulges in familiar action-movie clichés, such as masked and anonymous bad guys who rarely hit their targets. We also get tangled in the weeds sometimes with complicated plot devices; the ‘MacGuffin’ here is a case of ultra-specialized centrifuge bearings—the kind needed for uranium enrichment, since gas centrifuges can only function if their rotors spin at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute with virtually zero friction, to slowly tease apart uranium-235 from uranium-238.
Something like that.
Production values are first-rate. (It’s a kick to catch a glimpse of a poster for “Third Man” at one point.) Kitsch, who still looks like a magazine cover model even when he’s sustaining enough injuries to give a superhero reason to call for a time-out, has an effectively edgy intensity. He has a knack for repeating his lines with ferocity, as when he gets in the face of a suspected traitor and bellows, “Who are you working for? WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?!” Rona-Lee Simon and Kitsch have sizzling chemistry, and the supporting players are outstanding. Even as Edwards repeats the mantra, “Long live the brotherhood,” it’s clear he’s traveling a path to becoming not just a dark wolf, but one who travels alone.
