Smoke: a Peinard thriller, ideal for spending summer warm (critic)
Dennis Lehane signs a slow combustion thriller, which takes a little too much time to ignite, but is based on a crackling atmosphere and on a Taron Egerton always as charismatic as a charming investigator.
Taron Egerton is becoming a streaming superstar. In the wake of the huge box Carry-on – Second biggest success in Netflix’s story – The 35 -year -old young Englishman carries one of the most exciting series of summer for Apple: Smokea fiery thriller imagined by Dennis Lehanethe novelist behind Mystic River And Shutter Island. Here, the author explores another American obsession: the incendiaries. And as often with him, fire is never only a pretext to examine blackened souls.
Inspired by Podcast Firebugthe series follows Dave Gudsen, an investigator working among firefighters and specializing in criminal fires. Ancient soldier of fire himself, traumatized by an accident that almost cost him his life, Dave embarks on the kits of two pyromaniacs which sow terror in the wet landscapes of the northwest of the United States. Local police will force him to team up with detective Calderone, a pugnacious cop with the troubled past, to accelerate the investigation and stop the wave of fires.
Obviously, together, they form a tandem of fire, between ego confrontation and accomplice tension. A duo of overturned investigators who tame while the smoking danger permanently hovers. Like a feeling of apocalypse capable of ravaging everything at all times. Because fire is everywhere in Smoke : in surveys, in memories, in looks. And the staging of fires is impressive. She sometimes even confines to pure sensory fascination. The flames crackle on the screen, hypnotic, almost sensual. Terribly scary too, as the man seems helpless in front of the blaze. The atmosphere is there, burning and immersive.
But to covered the embers too much, the series sometimes lacks oxygen. The rhythm is slow, the writing very dialogued, and Smoke struggle to ignite. Its aesthetics worked is not enough to hide a slightly dated thriller mechanics.
Dennis Lehane seems to be satisfied with its status as a painted summer thriller, somewhat stuck in codes of a genre too obsessed with True detective for a decade. We find this melancholy tone, this grayish light, and its duo of investigators that does everything. Smoke essentially bet on the charisma ofEGERTON To keep our flame on. And his association with Smollett Jurnee Works wonderfully, slowly but surely spark in the middle of this atmospheric thriller.
Without a doubt, the last collaboration of Lehan With the ex-Kingsman – at the time of the prison series Black Bird (already on Apple) – was more original. More exciting too. But Smoke ends up finding her tone, by dint of insisting on what she does: film fire, faces, and wait. It is not an explosion, but slow combustion, full of ashes and secrets. An imperfect but inhabited thriller. And sometimes, that’s enough to maintain the embers of our interest … even when it seems ready to go out.
Smoke, season 1 in 9 episodes, to see on Apple TV + and also Canal + in France, from June 27 to August 15, 2025.
