‘Liaison’: The New Thriller That Criminally Wastes Cinema’s Sexiest Stars

Liaison is headlined by two of international cinema’s sexiest actors, Vincent Cassel and Eva Green, so the wholesale limpness of Virginie Brac’s six-part Apple TV+ series borders on the criminal.

That the leads are given zero chances to steam up the screen—this despite playing former lovers reunited amidst a European calamity—is nothing short of baffling, although squandering opportunities is the name of this affair’s tiresome game. Designed to hit the same international-intrigue sweet spot as Fauda and Tehran, it goes through the generic geopolitical motions with the sort of mundane, measured proficiency that’s apt to excite few—and put many to sleep.

As with last year’s The Undeclared War, Liaison (which premieres Feb. 24) hinges on cybersecurity fears, its story propelled by a sequence of hacking attacks against multiple facets of Britain’s core infrastructure. This greatly concerns British National Cyber Security Centre minister Richard Banks (Peter Mullan) and his assistant Alison Rowdy (Green), if not the man in charge of keeping the country safe from such electronic assaults, Mark Bolton (Patrick Kennedy), who wants to dismiss them as the handiwork of troublemaking pests rather than treat them as grave threats to the country’s safety and stability. Once the water, power grid, and air transportation systems are targeted, suggesting that a foreign enemy wants to bring England to its knees, much urgent handwringing ensues.

At the same time, French Foreign Legion vet-turned-mercenary Gabriel Delage (Cassel) is tasked by his boss Dumas (Gérard Lanvin)—on behalf of a shadowy client—to retrieve two Syrian computer “geniuses,” Samir (Aziz Dyab) and Walid (Marco Horanieh), who’ve hacked into President Assad’s police database and, in doing so, have uncovered secret plans for a terrorist attack. The nature of that impending strike is shrouded in secrecy for the majority of Liaison, and, ultimately, turns out to be superfluous to the proceedings; what’s of primary importance to creator/showrunner Brac is blending geopolitical espionage, fraught romance, and perilous action in a manner that’s been seen countless times before.

Gabriel’s initial attempt to extract Walid and Samir from Damascus goes down in flames, leading to his capture and their flight to England, where they hook up with their uncle and soon become wanted by both English and French forces, the latter led by Didier (Stanislas Merhar), who’s instructed by the president to retrieve the on-the-run Syrians.

One look at the cold-eyed Didier is enough to mark him as a conniving and cutthroat wheeler-dealer, and, unfortunately, that’s also true of just about everyone else in Liaison, whose characters are a collection of obvious and wooden ciphers who do nothing of interest—a consequence, perhaps, of their being so exhausted from all the exposition they’re asked to spout.

Through various twists and turns that are as muddled as they are trivial, Gabriel crosses paths with Alison, who years earlier betrayed him when they were partners in a radical pro-environment protest group. That vague backstory is intended to create simmering tension between the two. Instead, however, it mostly comes across as random and contrived; Cassel and Green’s formidable protagonists might be many things, but bleeding hearts doesn’t appear to be one of them.

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Even more frustrating is that Brac makes clear that Alison and Gabriel have lingering feelings for each other, only to then never exploit that angle for the charged eroticism an endeavor like this requires—and which it seemingly promises via a credit sequence that begins with images of a man and woman in sensual embrace. Teasing their union is one thing; outright neglecting it is another.

Everyone’s got a mission to accomplish and limited time to do it in Liaison, but, like the show’s title, those undertakings only sound meaningful. Brac sticks to routine with exasperating doggedness, including with regards to the friction that arises between Alison and her lawyer boyfriend Albert (Daniel Francis), who doesn’t take kindly to the idea that his would-be wife is working with a mercenary mixed up with terrorists—much less one whom she once loved.

Albert is around to provide Alison with personal problems to go along with her professional headaches, and yet he really just comes across as runtime filler. The same goes for Albert’s daughter Kim (Bukky Bakray), a one-dimensional teenager whose complaints about Alison materialize during an early episode and are subsequently dropped—like Kim herself—once the show’s spy business ramps up.

Though Cassel’s Gabriel is a ruthless private contractor, he’s also something of a softie with a heart of gold, just as Alison is a do-gooder with a not-so-flattering past. Liaison wants to be about compromised, complex people navigating a world in which it’s difficult to parse right from wrong. Unfortunately, its line-straddling mostly resonates as a wishy-washy lack of commitment, and that impression is amplified by a plot that wraps itself up in knots without ever feeling particularly tangled.

Talk about enigmatic moles, double agents, and power players consumes the show, albeit to no interesting end; from government officials trying to figure out which one of their own might be a traitor, to violent showdowns with anonymous gunmen, to intermittent globe-trotting, the material merely regurgitates tattered genre clichés.

In light of the fact that Apple TV+ subscribers already have access to Slow Horses, a far more colorful, inventive and surprising British spy drama, it’s difficult to imagine what the appeal of Liaison might be, save for seeing how thoroughly a television series can waste fine performers like Cassel, Green and Mullan—the last of whom is compelled to merely complain about bureaucrats’ growing desire to privatize national security services. That topic would seem, on the surface, like a good starting point for a 21st-century tale of warring superpowers, ruthless duplicity and societal peril. Brac, however, mines it for no thrills, too intently does her tale rely on chance encounters, fortuitous coincidences and easy-bake conflict resolutions.

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A self-contained saga that’s all foreplay and no payoff, Liaison peters out long before its conclusion. Should it somehow manage to snag a second season, it’d be wise to significantly raise its temperature via the sparks generated by its stars.

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