The Fortress (2024)

The series is more of a propaganda rather than a representation of art in screenwriting and cinematography. A could've been beautiful idea turned to a long tasteless scrap. It lacks vision, direction and creativity. The cohesion and flow of the story is terrible, like dropping random noise into episodes then trying to sew them together by poor writing and directing. It also lacks enough thoroughness in researching the scientific aspects of the series, thus having the appearance of a flat, inadequate picture of what the series wants to portray. I feel bad for the Norwegians as this series poorly represents them and their culture. All I see throughout is that men of Norway both in position of authority and places of society are incompetent, unintelligible, useless and egotistic; while women are evil, conniving and scheming to reach selfish and narcissistic goals even sacrificing morals, integrity and reason. Norway has one of the best societies I know, their culture is unique and beautiful, and the people, both men and women, are strong, respectable and capable. Instead of exhibiting the strength of its people as a collective and its rich culture amidst a quasi-dystopian background, it's just a pushing of a political agenda/propaganda. This to me is disrespectful and insensitive to the nation it wishes to describe and represent. I respect the actors though as their performance was good amidst the terrible and tasteless narrative. A hard pass, a waste of long viewing hours.

Another reviewer beat me to the punch line and I can but agree that The Fortress, feels propagandised. The pandemic, whether you believe in it or not (I don't) offered governments the opportunity to cast off democracy and behave like medical totalitarian states, under the global auspices, of a variety of un-elected, third party organisations. What's more disturbing is even though its over, a lot of the rights we took for granted, such as free speech, freedom of expression and travel (they are testing vaccine passports in Europe, for example in Portugal), have not been returned to us or are being curtailed. Misinformation as espoused during the COVID period, is alive and well and and an excuse for all manner of abuses. Okay, moving on, what about The Fortress as a series? Is it any good? Its comes backed by a largely talented cast but sadly, for me, it just doesn't work. The whole story overplays its chaotic aspects. Its hard not to view it as pandemic scare mongering. The result of this inconsistent script, is a tale that does not hold together, all that well, at all. I've already alluded to the upside of decent acting, to that can be added quality production values but really its not enough to save this series. In summary, this reviewer found it very hard not to see this as propaganda no matter how I might try. Decent acting and strong production values, don't do much, to assuage this vibe.