Duster: JJ Abrams rolls in Dacia (critic)

Absent from Star Wars: the ascent of Skywalker, the brilliant director makes his comeback with a small, old -fashioned series and not well inspired.

After his Ascension of Skywalker very criticized, JJ Abrams passed out in Hollywood nature. From aborted projects to scathing disillusionment, the filmmaker had to step back. He produced the excellent Lovecraft Country In 2020 (but canceled after a season), the animated series Batman: Caped Crusader (2024) or the adaptation of Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, completely unnoticed in 2021 (on Apple). But his major personal projects have all been pericked in recent years, notably the very ambitious Demimondea huge science fiction chronicle cut by HBO as he had been planning on it for years.

So it’s with DustSmall displacement without pressure or ambition, that it recoveries slowly in the saddle. A return by the small screen, almost 15 years after its last creation (Undercovers). JJ Abramsentered the Pantheon of TV series thanks to Alias And Lostis far from its usual standards here.

He opted for a cushy trip in the 1970s (the series was co-created with Latoya Morgan), alongside his former beach comrade,, Josh Hollowaywhich takes the wheel of this vintage thriller. True to his charismatic cowboy pout, he embodies a driver for gangsters hunted down by the first black woman agent of the FBI with whom he will end up teaming up, to bring down a local mafia.

Dust is a polar disco that plays the harmless entertainment card and read more on the side of Sheriff, scare me that narrative labyrinths of Lost. It is hard to recognize the paw Abrams In this ostensibly retro detective series, not to say outdated, and which also bears the name of the real main character: a Plymouth Duster Orange with wild lines, which devours the screen like the Dodge Charge des Cousins ​​Dukethe Ferrari 308 GTS of Thomas Magnumor the Pontiac Trans-Am of Michael Knight.

We are in the middle of the time when the heat engine was an extension of virility, when the big displacement represented a form of raw enjoyment. Except that the pilot Holloway Make a henchman too smooth to make an impression, and that in front of the FBI agent supposed to counterbalance and carry a feminist discourse ends up embodying a laborious manifesto, too didactic to convince. We are in the nostalgic little kiff of a filmmaker who has fun without getting too wet. All this lacks horses under the hood.

Duster, season 1 in 8 episodes to see on Max in France until July 3, 2025. An episode every Friday.