Oh, this is fun. But it could be more fun, you know? The Last Frontier starts with a plane crashing into the Alaskan wilderness. I admire a TV show that starts with a bang and gets us going from the first frame. But apparently, the whole “crashing a plane at the outset” isn’t exciting enough, so The Last Frontier is bold enough to ask: “Hey, what if the plane was carrying a bunch of convicts, and one of those convicts was a super badass who caused the plane crash?”
You had my curiosity, The Last Frontier. Now you have my attention. It’s all very Con Air, but that’s fine.
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The Last Frontier’s first two episodes, titled “Blue Skies” and “Winds of Change,” respectively, are something of a high-powered thriller, following U.S. Marshall Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke), who suddenly has to deal with dozens of extremely dangerous criminals running around in his backyard. But it’s not just about Frank (“Mr. Remnick is his father,” he says at one point).
The CIA has an extremely vested interest in securing the prisoner who staged that plane crash – they call him Havlock, and I will not say more here as his identity is a major part of the plot – so they send the hard-drinking, on-the-outs Sydney Scofield (Haley Bennett) to liaison with (and manipulate) Frank, assuming he’s just some podunk Marshall who is out of his depth. But Sydney has no love for the CIA or her boss, Jaqueline Bradford (Alfre Woodard), so what she’ll do is anyone’s guess.
The Last Frontier takes a Con Air premise as a foundation and goes further.
The series quickly becomes an engaging game of cat and mouse between not only Havlock and the folks tasked with getting him back, but between Frank and Sydney, too. Everyone’s wary of one another, and everyone has a secret, big or small. Watching these characters dance around one another is a pleasure, and all the actors are game, even if the characters themselves often fit into archetypes.
Frank is the small-town Marshall who cares deeply for his community and has a strong sense of honor, but Clarke plays him with a kind of weary competence that’s endearing and commands respect. You can see why people would follow him. On the other side of things, you’re never quite sure of Sydney, who’s out for herself, but has a deeper connection to Havlock that makes things interesting.
It looks remarkable, of course. You can see the money on-screen, and Alaska’s stark landscapes are rendered with an easy, almost casual believability. The Last Frontier has flaws, but its production design is so far not among them.
When the Apple TV+ Original sticks to its pulpy setup, it’s a very good time. There’s a pretty remarkable action sequence when Frank and his crew first find the downed airliner that speaks to Extraction director Sam Hargrave’s chops, and when that stuff is happening, The Last Frontier is quite enjoyable.
The problem is that it might be trying to do too much. There are a lot of characters here, from Frank’s wife Sarah (Simone Kessell), and son Luke Remmick (Tait Blum) to his partner Hutch (Dallas Goldtooth), other escaped criminals like Henry Dale Sickler (Prince Amponsah), and other folks who are just part of this small town. The Last Frontier’s trying to build a bigger story, which is admirable, but it often gets lost in its own sauce, and you can’t help but wonder if some of this is necessary.
Thrillers benefit from tightness and narrative momentum, but The Lost Frontier seems to think it has something to say. At one point, Frank gives Sydney this monologue on how she shouldn’t look down on the people of his town, and you realize that this show thinks it has something to say when it would be better sticking to its pulpy premise. There’s nothing wrong with pulp, after all.
The Last Frontier is at its best when it embraces its pulpy nature, but a large cast may be just too much.
But God, The Last Frontier loves to talk, loves to flash back, loves to mine backstory in a way that makes the episodes both a tad too long (both episodes here are closer to an hour than 48 minutes) and that undermines the manhunt. I don’t hate learning about these characters’ backstories; I just wish the series was more selective when doling them out, and in what it wants to invest in.
By the second episode, I was beginning to wonder if the show was going to squander the promise of The Last Frontier Episode 1. I’m not sure it is, but The Last Frontier’s attempts to elevate it beyond that often fall flat. I’m still interested enough to see where this is going, but the dropoff between the first and second episodes is noticeable. I guess we’ll see if this thriller can find its way out of the cold.
The Last Frontier Episode 1 & 2, are streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.
