The unimaginative spawn of Kill Bill, Killing Eve, and John Wick, the new series Kill Jackie is a pitifully derivative revenge saga in which Catherine Zeta-Jones, 57, struts around Spain in fancy outfits touting her own badassery as she battles a cadre of legendary assassins. Based on Nick Harkaway’s book The Price You Pay, AMC’s eight-part thriller series (Oct. 2) lacks virtually everything it needs—inspiration, cleverness, hilarity, suspense—and its cartoonishness is so extreme that it murders any chance at being taken seriously.
No matter its endless infatuation with guns, the only relevant barrel here is the figurative one in which this series sits at the bottom.
Quentin Tarantino just about deserves residuals from Kill Jackie, so blatantly does it borrow from his Uma Thurman-headlined 2003-2004 films. Although in truth, he’d have to battle it out with the numerous other individuals whose work is cribbed by this tongue-in-cheek affair.
Still, imitation is hardly its worst sin, given that it’s also defined by an off-putting smugness and unreality that turn its every “cool” and “funny” moment excruciating. Couple all that with a heroine whose invincibility is never in doubt (hence her limitless confidence), and what you have is an ordeal that becomes more insufferable with each homicide.
Jackie Price (Zeta-Jones) is a posh wheeler-dealer who sells valuable art to the ultra-rich at tax-haven freeports. However, despite dubbing herself a “magician,” she’s grown bored with her profession. Fortunately, she’s knocked out of her doldrums when she declines a jerky American’s bid on a painting and, shortly thereafter, is visited by a group of assassins in her swanky flat.
Behind her own paintings lie a trio of machine guns that take out these baddies, thereby firmly establishing the proceedings’ comic book-y tone and underlining that, no matter the peril she faces, Jackie will always have a deus ex machina in her back pocket to save her from trouble.
In one svelte outfit after another, Jackie is a queen bee who’s assisted and adored by young Charlie (Hattie Hook), and in the aftermath of the failed attempt on her life, she learns from Russian killer Karenina (Sidse Babett Knudsen) that she’s the next contract of the Seven Demons, a mythic gang of hitmen whom Karenina is, in fact, joining in a few short hours. Jackie can’t deduce why someone has put a price on her head, but fragmentary flashbacks indicate that 20 years earlier, she was a fearsome cocaine dealer who turned on her boss and fled with her loot, thereby facilitating her new life.
Kill Jackie, however, plays coy with its revelations, and that’s wise, considering that when they arrive, they’re intensely hackneyed and expose the entire enterprise’s creative barrenness.
The first Demon to pursue Jackie is a desperado known as The Cuban (Sebastian Armesto) who has a fondness for snakeskin and is about as menacing as the sandwich after which he’s named. When she’s betrayed by an old colleague, Jackie decides it’s best to flee. Thus, she hops on a private plane to Bilbao with Charlie and her tax lawyer Sam (Daniel Ings), whom she’s hot for regardless of the fact that he’s a creaky stereotype: the wimpy British scaredy-cat who does nothing but incessantly fret, freak out, and flail about in the face of danger. Any sane person would leave Sam on the nearest street corner, yet Jackie humors his worrying, whining, and incompetence with the same self-satisfied sly smile she flashes at everyone.
Once in Spain, they all set about trying to deduce who’s hired the Seven Demons while avoiding meeting their maker. That’s easy, since Kill Jackie is basically a goofy comedy masquerading as a vicious bloodbath, proudly wearing its absurdity on its sheer, shiny sleeve.
Goofy musical cues and wannabe-funny cutaways are emblematic of the series’ brashness, as is Zeta-Jones’ self-consciously over-the-top performance. Whether she’s scowling and making threats or strutting through trouble and dancing to the camera, the actress strives for larger-than-life diva grandiosity.
Yet mostly, it comes across as a tedious pose, both because she never seems believable as a fabled criminal mastermind and, just as crucially, because creators Tom Butterworth, Conor Keane, Peter Lawson, and Damon Thomas saddle her with a procession of groan-worthy adversaries and dilemmas.
After more misfortune, Jackie seeks help from Zigor (Óscar Jaenada), a former Seven Demons member turned recluse whom she convinces to join her quest. Zigor is a bland caricature, and so too are the Seven Demons, whose evil quirkiness is meant to be delightful but is instead simply excruciating.
Be it a mute Asian nerd who has a weakness for classic vinyl, a pair of Teutonic ex-special forces brothers who are at each other’s throats, or a coolly rational Black scientist known as The Doc (Christine Adams) who, in a black-and-white suit and an eye patch, is lamely cosplaying as Daryl Hannah’s Kill Bill baddie Elle Driver, Kill Jackie’s villains are fourth-generation photocopies, and their enhanced role in the show’s second half is a lethal misstep.
Zaniness abounds as Jackie strives to exact vengeance on those hunting her, whether she’s enlisting the oh-so-convenient services of shadowy benefactors known as Poltergeist (who can grant her anything at a moment’s notice) or having a reunion with her wayward relatives during a dreary quasi-time-out installment. Determined to remain insubstantial, Killing Jackie indulges in glamorous chaos and carnage without recognizing that it has no sense of humor and its flamboyant characters are stale replicas of superior ancestors.
Even at feature film length, it would have come across as trite and tiresome. At eight episodes, though, it’s a chore that becomes increasingly tough to endure—a situation exacerbated by overblown supporting turns that make your average Disney Channel performance appear sophisticated by comparison.
For Zeta-Jones, who won an Oscar for Chicago 23 years ago, Kill Jackie is a comeback vehicle that breaks down almost as soon as it gets going, and her protagonist’s somewhat diminished role in the outcome of her own story is part and parcel of a show that doesn’t know what it’s doing. There’s no doubt about Jackie’s prospects for survival against the Seven Demons, but in the wake of this disaster, her chances for a second season seem far direr.
