The series takes on Catherine the Great with off-kilter comedy and startling poignancy.
As a suspense film, it’s so sluggishly structured that it borders on the avant-garde.
Director Gavin Hood treats the aesthetics of high-tech surveillance as the opaque membrane through which the prosecution of the War on Terror must pass.
It ends up cheapening its sense of empathy in its final mad rush to subject audiences to every incarnation of the jump scare imaginable.