Citadel review: Priyanka Chopra outstanding in the action parts

In the first episode of Citadel, Richard and Priyanka's characters lose their memories due a bomb blast in the train.

Hyderabad: Citadel is Amazon Prime Video’s new series, backed by the Russo brothers. It stars Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas as the leads. The series has six episodes for its first season, and the makers have released the first two episodes this weekend.

It was created by Josh, Bryan, and David Weil. Newton Thomas is the director for the first two episodes of the series.

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The first episode of Citadel, the human enigma, opens with a nicely setup action scene in a train where both the leads, Richard and Priyanka, are introduced as Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh. They both work for Citadel, a secret spy organisation that the world considers a myth but that takes part in major events across the globe. Due to a bomb blast in the train, Mason and Nadia get separated and lose their memories, unfortunately. What happens in their lives next and how do they meet again after eight years on a mission is the basic setup of the show in the first two episodes.

Going further into the details, Mason lives in Italy with a new family, and Nadia works in a bar in Spain currently. Bernard, played by Stanley Tucci, somehow reaches Mason to get him back into action as a spy to save the world from a few dangerous upcoming nuclear events being planned by Manticore. So the plot here is Citadel versus Manticore, where the former works secretly for human safety and is not bound to any nation or individual. On the other hand, Manticore is founded by eight wealthy families across the globe who keep world events under their control.

The first two episodes of the series are primarily concentrated on the organisation’s activities and the current and past identities of the leads. This screenplay part can be paced a lot more instead of lag-detailing. The series so far has only two major action sequences, in the beginning of both episodes, respectively. While the first action part in the first episode looks regular with firings and other stuff, the second action part has a raw touch in the second episode featuring Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

So far, there is nothing much to talk about the making of the series other than these couple of action episodes. The production values are very lavish, and the makers have shot the series in different cities across the world.

One more aspect the viewers expect from the series is more of the traits of the spies than just relying on their identities. Also, revealing the plot that Manticore wants to remove Citadel can be a little risky to grab the audience’s attention later. One needs to wait and see what other thrilling elements the creators have hidden from us for the next few episodes.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas is totally outstanding in the action parts. Kudos to the actress for handling them all by herself with immense training for the series.

The next four episodes of the show will be released over the next two weekends, with two each on Friday.

– Kiran