Black Hearts: the breathtaking action series arrives on France 2 (review)
A year after its streaming on Prime Video, the impressive series on French special forces in Iraq arrives free-to-air this evening on France 2.
If French fiction has already evoked the recent fight against jihadism with series like The Bureau of Legends, Sentinels or No Man’s Land, Black hearts – which begins this evening unencrypted on France 2 – provides a unique point of view on the subject by following a French special forces commando deployed in Iraq in 2016.
With the mission of finding the daughter and grandson of a recently arrested French emir of Daesh, who will only cooperate if his family is freed from the clutches of jihadists, the soldiers imagined by screenwriters Corinne Garfin and Duong Dang-Thai remain thus in a reduced geographical area but with very high risks where they must constantly make rapid and adapted decisions.
Confronted as much with physical action as with strategy, the characters – men and women of the French army, Kurdish fighters and other infiltrated individuals – are made particularly credible by the staging of Ziad Doueiri (director of West Beirut and The Insultwho also worked on Black Baron) which delivers breathtaking action sequences and sticks as closely as possible to the emotions. Far from being reduced to his only struggles, Black hearts draws up a captivating inventory of the entire Iraqi environment where the protagonists evolve and is based on a casting which notably sees Nicolas Duvauchelle cross Thierry Godard, to offer a nice tragic depth to this harsh troop of special forces. Assignment ? Accomplished.
Black Hearts, season 1 in 6 episodes to watch on France Télévisions and Prime Video.
