The Consultant Review: It Is Like Autumn Leaves On The Trees | Amazon Prime Video Series
Cast: Christoph Waltz, Nat Wolff, Brittany O’Grady
Creator: Tony Basgallop
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
In a continuous weave of suspense and paradox, The Consultant is the new thriller series conceived by Tony Basgallop (Inside Man) and directed by director Matt Shakman (the Marvel series WandaVision, the Revenge series, Fantastic Four). This dark comedy, consisting of a single season of 8 episodes, each about thirty minutes long, is based on the homonymous novel by Bentley Little. In the cast we find an amazing Christoph Waltz in the role of consultant Regus Patoff; actor Nat Wolff (Paper Towns, the unexpected intern) plays Craig, one of the programmers, while we find Brittany O’Grady (Paula in The White Lotus, Simone Davis in the Star series) in the role of the ambitious Elaine.
To the definition of “mysterious objects” you can now also include the series that we tell you about in the review of The Consultant, available on Prime Video from February 24, with an exceptional protagonist like Christoph Waltz. The series is based on Bentley Little’s 2015 novel of the same name, and it’s a really hard subject to pin down. And this is its value but also its limitation. In a world like that of The Consultant, one passes from a story close to a thriller to something close to a comedy and a sociological treatise. The problem is that The Consultant does not seem to choose a path and ends up being none of this. But it has an exceptional protagonist (or antagonist): Christoph Waltz.
The Consultant Review: The Story Plot
CompWare, a company that produces games for smartphones, is in a situation of partial crisis; Elaine leads a group of children to visit the office to meet Mr. Sang, the young founder of CompWare. Here one of the children shoots Sang, killing him. From this moment on, the leadership of the company will pass to a mysterious figure hired before dying by Sang himself: The Consultant Regus Patoff. While Craig and Elaine try to gather information about their creepy new boss, Patoff begins to create an atmosphere of heightened tension in the office, led by a heightened toxic competitiveness. While Elaine herself becomes more and more involved in Patoff’s plans, due to her ferocious ambition, Craig continues his investigations; the young programmer will come across some figures from Patoff’s past. The more Craig learns about The Consultant, the more his and his girlfriend Patty’s lives are in danger.
The Consultant Review and Analysis
The Consultant is a series characterized by a strong state of tension, continuously transmitted to the viewer by simple and small details: the continuous insistence on the creaking glass stairs, especially when Patoff himself climbs them. The mysterious disappearance of Ms. Sang is already in the first episodes. This atmosphere of mystery and suspense keeps the viewer’s attention steady, in anticipation of some mind-blowing twist. Nonetheless, The Consultant leaves some doubts open for the viewer: considering the ending and the still lack of confirmation of a second season, the events may end in just these eight episodes. In this way The Consultant turns out to be incomplete: when it comes to thrillers of this kind, it is necessary to allow the viewer to be able to fully understand all the events in the finale, which however was not fully guaranteed here.
What is Regus Patoff? In the second episode of the series, Mrs. Sang, speaking of her son, claims that he has been taken by the devil, but what exactly does that mean? These are just some of the dilemmas that The Consultant leaves to the viewer. Perhaps a few more episodes in this first season would have been enough to develop this interesting plot to its full potential. But, at this point, we just have to hope for a potential second season that can clarify everything!
One of the most interesting and most in-depth themes in The Consultant is toxic competitiveness: episode after episode we see how Patoff aims to create a work environment that is not morally healthy, but more productive. When The Consultant arrives, the company’s situation is dramatic: Mr. Sang, being only twenty, has created a very flexible work environment, but at the same time full of “waste” economically speaking. Already from the first day in the office, Patoff imposes a whole series of sacrifices on his employees: he forces remote workers to have to go to the office in an hour and fires a disabled girl because she is slightly late. The Consultant was willing to fire a manager solely for his smell: the latter is forced to wash in the office with soap supplied to him by Patoff himself.
As events progress, Patoff will make an office in the upper part reserved for managers available to anyone who wants it: in this way he has brought out the ferocity of some employees, willing to fight by any means to obtain the office. This climate, based only on cold productivity, has nothing to do with the environment present at CompWare during the management of Sang. From the few images in the first episode and some flashbacks, the difference is clear: if Sang had created a modern, flexible, and inclusive work environment, only competitiveness remains with Patoff.
Another clear example of a toxic work ethic in The Consultant is the growth of the character of Elaine. The girl who in the first few episodes seems to be very sweet and attached to strong moral principles ends up being corrupted by ambition and by Patoff himself. The latter puts her in front of many crossroads, great sacrifices that she ends up being willing to make to obtain the approval of her boss and the job satisfactions she longed for. Elaine will no longer see consultant Regus Patoff as an actual threat, but as a mentor who helped the company grow.
Yet it is sadistic, and the game that takes place between boss and employees is sadistic. He allows himself to call them at any time, he fires them if, from smart working, they don’t reach the office within the hour. Or if they don’t smell good. The series also follows for this, to understand who this man is, to understand what he will do next time, to understand where he will end up with the story. However, it fails to emphasize the tension inherent in the story and dilutes it with a comedy tone that ends up not making the story fully work either as a thriller or as a comedy. Because, after all, we laugh through clenched teeth. Because there probably isn’t the right gap between fiction and reality in a world of work in which workers are truly hanging by a thread, a world where “it feels like the leaves on the trees in autumn” like the soldiers of Ungaretti. In short, there is little to laugh about, also because if the curious pretexts with which Patoff kills employees can make people smile, in the real world there are far too many pretexts.
The most important reason to see The Consultant, then, is precisely Christoph Waltz, an actor who, every time he arrives in the cinema or on TV, always transforms into one of those characters that “we love to hate”. It was like this with Hans Landa of Inglourious Basterds and then with Walter Keane of Big Eyes, passing through the character of Carnage. Every time he’s on screen, Waltz turns meanness into something surreal, and dislike into something that makes the rounds and becomes sympathy. An almost unique mask in the current panorama, Waltz has that printed smile, that impassive air that makes his characters a continuous, and declared joke. And that works here too.
Next to him stand the two true protagonists of the story, the two hosts with whom we identify or develop empathy. They are two real surprises. Nat Wolff, actor, and singer is Craig, good guy face and Zach Braff-esque aplomb, a character we’d all want as a friend. Even more impressed us was Brittany O’Grady, who is Elaine, assistant to the deceased number one of the companies. Irresistible face, huge black eyes, and raven hair (she has African American and Irish blood), we saw her in The Night Shift and The White Lotus. Brittany O’Grady manages to portray a character who manages to convey both sex appeal and familiarity, that she’s attractive but she’s also the girl next door, putting us at ease as she takes us through this strange story.
The Consultant Review: The Last Words
As we explained to you in the review of The Consultant, in this series we go from a story close to a thriller to something close to comedy and a sociological treatise. The problem is that The Consultant does not seem to choose a path and ends up being none of this. But it has an exceptional protagonist (or antagonist): Christoph Waltz. Despite the presence of a far-from-trivial plot and the interesting performance of Christoph Waltz, the series ends up leaving too many unresolved questions.
