Elisabeth Moss has acted in more projects than you can remember for more years than you can imagine, but it was “Mad Men” in 2007 that made her the reason to watch a show, an impression cemented by “Top of the Lake.” and taken for granted at the time of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
She is a fierce presence; Even when she plays helplessness, she radiates intensity. In “The Veil,” created by Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders”) and premiering Tuesday on Hulu, the camera has a habit of looking directly at her face, subjecting him to her penetrating gaze.
Moss plays MI6 agent Imogen Salter, which we immediately understand is just her latest name espionage. (The actor's father was British, so his accent is half-honest.) He appears incognito in a snowy UN refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border, where a young woman, Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan), has been taken. she in protective custody after nearly being lynched by a mob who believe she is Sabaine al Kubaisi, a high-level Islamic State commander, “the most wanted woman in the world.”
Imogen has come to the camp to find out what Adilah, or Sabaine, might know about a rumored major terrorist attack on a Western target, and takes her along. Due in large part to Marwan's profound shock, our sympathy initially goes to Adilah, a lonely, broken figure just waiting to return to his 10-year-old daughter in Paris.
At least he seems to be telling the truth, while Imogen, who represents powerful government institutions, lies professionally all the time, although we're not sure to what extent to believe what any of them say. “Even though we're lying to each other, I feel like I've been more honest with her than most people,” Imogen will tell French agent Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah), her contact and more or less boyfriend, regarding Adilah.
Elisabeth Moss, left, with Yumna Marwan, who plays Adilah El Idrissi.
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Imogen may seem a little crazy; She has a habit of smiling at strange times, making it difficult to know exactly what's going on there. We can infer from her smoking and drinking that she's some sort of unstable person, and we're fed snippets of an origin story to suggest an unresolved trauma, which seems designed to parallel Adilah's, but which will obviously be pieced together further. forward.
At the end (close to the beginning, actually) Imogen will go rogue, confront her superiors, and protect (and interrogate) Adilah as they travel from Syria to Istanbul to Paris to England, their path obstructed by terrorist proxies and intelligence agencies. intelligence in war.
It's basically a road movie, the kind where strangers who find themselves together become less strangers to each other. As a spy story it's a decent example of its type, but as a two-hander drama, propelled by Moss and Marwan's subtle performances, it's pretty fantastic.
Josh Charles plays CIA agent Max Peterson, a caricature of American bravado, impatience, self-approval and Francophobia, sent to Paris to hijack the French intelligence investigation. (Imogen is on loan to them, she being the absolute best at what she does; British intelligence does not come into the picture).
Described by Malik's superior, Magritte (the august Thibault de Montalembert, who recently provided similar service in “Franklin”), as “the most American American the United States has ever produced,” Max doesn't leave the airport before fighting with Malik. . His competitive deer relationship is as close to comic relief as “The Veil” will ever get.
Terrorism, as depicted on screen, is a tired and complicated topic, subject to cultural stereotypes. Consequently, Knight has left the composition of his evildoers – not even ISIS (i.e. Islamic State) but “an ISIS splinter cell,” a fringe fringe group – a bit vague and with sides painted in a variety of ethnicities. (It is noted that both Adilah and Malik are French Algerians). But here terrorism is a device, not a theme.
Although its premise makes it inevitably political, “The Veil” is only, one might say, incidentally, no more interested in actual geopolitics or ideology than “Ronin,” which recalls the Paris locations, or “The 39 Steps.” This seems to me to be her strength; In terms of storytelling, the death of hundreds, thousands, millions or billions is simply a tool, a sensational and meaningless abstraction, as it can be in life, unfortunately. We've seen the world or significant parts of it destroyed on screen so often that the apocalypse has become an empty cliché, nothing more than a vehicle for expensive effects and cheap thrills. But the breakup of just one friendship can break your heart.
If it's not always clear in the moment who shoots whom or why, every time the script triggers a fight, a shootout, a chase or an escape, there's no doubt who to root for: both Imogen and Adilah. When asked to choose between them, one simply suspends judgment, hoping, as with any couple in trouble, that things will work out. Although all six episodes were sent to reviewers, only the first four were allowed to be reviewed, so you'll have to watch them and decide for yourself.
