The Minions of Midas review: A murder mystery where you keep waiting for the mystery to unfold | Bollywood Life
Scroll down for my full The Minions of Midas review… Also Read – The Liberator review: Groundbreaking animation and riveting battle sequences tide over the emotional vapidity of this war drama
What’s it about
A media mogul, recently come into a surprising inheritance, receives a threatening letter from a group that calls itself ‘The Minions of Midas’. He needs to siphon off most of his conglomerate’s shares, failing which a random person will die every few days, but it’s this very randomness of the extortion that prevents him from caving in. Simultaneously, a journalist in his employment uncovers a huge scandal, involving one of the company’s major investors funding arms to the regime in Syria. Also Read – Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives trailer: Maheep Kapoor and Bhavana Pandey’s docu-drama of glitz and glamour is for the 1 percenters
What’s hot
As mentioned before, the first episode of The Minions of Midas begins with a bang, and the second is good enough to tag us along for the remaining four episodes. Other positives include the performances, especially those by Luis Tosar, Marta Belmonte and Guillermo Toledo as also the production values and the camerawork by Pau Esteve Birba. Plus, keeping the web series concise at just six episodes was a smart move by the maker to ensure that most watch it to the end in the lure of finding out how the mystery finally unfolds. Also Read – Netflix and Amazon Prime under government regulation; to now come in the purview of I&B Ministry
What’s not
From midway through the third episode till about three quarters of the finale, you actually get bored and keep checking the time, wondering when things will finally come to an head. Miguel Barros and Mateo Gil’s screenplay becomes progressively weaker as the web show goes on, as does the latter’s direction (he calls the shots for all six episodes), and is an excruciating test of our patience to wait it out till the last 20 minutes or so (when things finally start to get a move on) purely on the promise of the first two episodes. The editing also cops much of the blame despite the decision to keep the overall length concise, and for the life of me I can’t understand why the makers were so stingy with the use of BGM to just liven things up. A slow-burner thriller is one thing, and I appreciate it when the script demands of, but this one really takes it too far, and more bewilderingly, the premise doesn’t merit such a treatment.
BL Verdict
The Minions of Midas isn’t as bad as its boring and fails to live up to its potential. The ambiguity set up in the beginning remains just that: Ambiguous till the last episode, with the mystery unfolding too late and the payoff not being big enough. I’m going with 2 out of 5 stars.
