2023-05-29 13:35:33
Aparents with dignity? Pretty difficult when you were an alpha male. Having accumulated wisdom over the course of a lifetime is of no use to people who imagine that an American president should radiate vitality. Sayings like Wolfgang Kubicki: it was funny for a long time, but at some point you start to think it’s a craving for attention. Fumbling around on stage like Mick Jagger: a bit obsessive, isn’t it?
You can also do it like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The man is a legend. Now he’s dismantling it. He has just been appointed Chief Officer of Action by Netflix. His first feat is his very first appearance in a series, at the age of 75. He plays a 65-year-old in “Fubar” because he made a point of not hiding his age in his deal with Netflix, but playing it offensively.
He looks 64. Good body, impressive muscles, square face. So this Styrian oak tree embodies a CIA agent named Luke Brunner, who has just finished his last assignment (an almost casual extrajudicial execution of human traffickers) and after all these years of looking after himself, his work-life balance and sacrificed his marriage for the nation, preparing for retirement.
All he has to do is wrap up his cover operation, repaint the boat (“not a boat, but a ship,” he says, but of course it’s a boat) that the CIA gave him as a farewell, the beloved ex-wife, the he lied about his job all his life, bring him on deck and set sail with her. Everything will be fine.
But how it is after the last mission, you know it from Elton John or the Rolling Stones: There is always a really very last mission. In Guyana, Luke Brunner is tasked with extracting an undercover agent from the camp of a nuclear weapons dealer whose father he once pushed over a cliff – the agent is about to be exposed and must be saved from execution. Of course Luke does the job.
And has to realize that the colleague is his own daughter Emma, whom he thought was working as an irrigation expert for an NGO and whom he remembers as a violin-playing child prodigy. Now she’s a killing machine like him. And a woman who has had sex even though she’s only 28. And has a lipstick in her luggage that starts to vibrate if you touch it wrong. Emma! The most understandable thing about her is that she loathes him because he was never around when she was growing up and pretended to be a fitness equipment salesman.
Luke Brunner (Arnold Schwarzenegger, r.) and his crew: Fortune Feimster as Roo Russell, Milan Carter as Barry Putt, Aparna Brielle as Tina Mukerji and Travis Van Winkle as …Aldon Reece
Quelle: 2023 Netflix, Inc.
The remaining seven and a half of the eight episodes of “Fubar” tell a story whose twists and turns are easy to anticipate if you’ve seen a few action bangers and action comedies: Odd team made up of sheer island talents, World-wide hunt for villain, Brutal use of flamethrowers and automatic firearms, untimely detonations, saving ideas at the very last second, diabolical monologues, a bit of lingerie in between, and so on. It’s a well-oiled machine that runs as reliably as a good dad coming home every night to hug his little girl and then his big girl.
Schwarzenegger works best of all. It’s not because of his body, at 75 or 65 you can no longer step in double Rittberger. It’s not because of his acting skills, which haven’t increased in recent years, but because of his outstanding intelligence and a realistic assessment of his own strengths. Schwarzenegger has understood what a 75-year-old should do with the role of the action hero – not even try to fill it out, but chop it up like the Terminator used to do to people.
A fossil fallen out of time
That’s why there are fewer beating sequences in “Fubar” than family constellations. That’s why Schwarzenegger turns into a full-throated horst who, for example, doesn’t know what a cuckold is and wants to name his ship “Tally Ho” after his beloved ex-wife (until the people on the team tell him that that’s actually “Tally -whore”), so he scolds his girl for having the wrong fiancé, so he really takes every opportunity to demonstrate that he’s an out-of-time fossil.
The fight scenes in “Fubar” are shot so offensively with body doubles (never face and body at the same time) that everyone realizes what this is about: not about the credible simulation of a man who saves the world even beyond retirement, but about having fun to smash the conventions and clichés of the action comedy series genre.
This is done in “Fubar” with a thoroughness that can only be admired. The series delights with the nerdiest nerds, most lesbians, lamest name jokes, and with the very worst jokes since Thomas Gottschalk and Mike Krüger’s “Supernasen”. Daring to do something like this in 2023 will certainly require more courage than defusing a nuclear suitcase bomb.
A guy like Arnie really doesn’t need to prove himself anymore. He finds his amusement in destroying the legend of the past. It’s great for dads, because they don’t even realize how much someone is making fun of them. For her daughters too. Because they can roll their eyes at Daddy’s jokes for eight episodes – and still really love him.
#Netflix #series #Fubar #Dads #Daughters