Stream It Or Skip It?

A plane full of nasty, nasty criminals goes down near Fairbanks, Alaska, disrupting the cozy life of a U.S. Marshal in The Last Frontier (now streaming on Apple TV+), creator Jon Bokenkamp’s follow-up to his hit series The Blacklist. Frontier boasts Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett and Dominic Cooper as its leads, and marks Bokenkamp’s jump from network dramas to the relatively unshackled environs of “prestige” streaming TV, so maybe the freedom-glorious-freedom premise of his new show is a metaphor for his career, hopefully without the lost-in-the-Arctic bit – although the pilot episode shows signs that this may be true.

Opening Shot: Lights from police vehicles blur in the distance as we hear motors and tires roar across the tarmac.

The Gist: Those lights? They belong to a security convoy transporting a hooded, goggled, earmuffed, handcuffed, footcuffed man to a transport plane at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. He’s the worst of the worst on a plane full of orange jumpsuits, face tats, simmering glares and shackled appendages, and is that Johnny Knoxville among them? And Clifton Collins Jr.? Indeed it is. The plane lifts off and not much time passes before BOOM – one engine bursts into flames and a chunk of fuselage rips off the craft and guys (and ladies, there’s some lady prisoners here too) start whooshing out the hole and plummeting to their deaths, apparently because they didn’t wear their seatbelts? The calmest of them all is Hooded Bro back there, who’s calmly picking the many locks Lectering him to his seat so he may float and swim in zero-gravity like a superhero, above the chaos. 

On the ground, a nice guy and his nice little boy are camping when a flaming boot plops in the middle of their site, prompting them to run for their truck, which is soon smashed by debris. Ironic Elvis plays on the soundtrack as the plane shears off a wing and skids to a violent halt in a clearing. Creeps, ruffians and goons spill out and assault the security Marshals on the plane who are still alive, and the camera zooms in on one mean-as-hell-looking mofo with a Unabomber beard and a look in his eye that tells us he’s Done Things You Just Don’t Wanna Know, Man.

Cut to: Fairbanks. Frank Remnick (Clarke) is in charge ’round these here parts. He leads the U.S. Marshals. He takes a morning jog through town and says hi to everybody he trots past, stops to return the stare of a moose in the middle of the road – I think it’s name is Omen, but that’s just a guess – then heads home to his nurse wife Sarah (Simone Kessell) and teenage son Luke (Tate Blum). He has good news: That cabin they wanna buy? They accepted the offer. Their dream is for Frank to quit the Marshals so they can run a bed-and-breakfast in the rugged wilderness. He transferred here from Chicago, and later in this episode Sarah will reference “what you went through” and how she “put us back together once.” Which vaguely but mostly satisfactorily explains why he wants to hang up his gun and badge.

Not that Frank’s bad at his job. By no means. He heads to work with a box of Dunkins and banters with the folks in the office, including a pal who has big plans to play hopscotch with his adorable little girl after work; I think this means that guy’s name is Doomed. They take the helicopter to investigate a plume of smoke over on yon horizon. They poke around the crash site for a minute and find a Marshal face down and when Frank turns him over he says one thing: “Ambush.” The inmates chimp and ape and baboon out of their hiding spots and Frank and his deputies punch and shoot and grapple their way through the melee in one big long shot that reminded me of something, which came to me when I saw the name of this episode’s director: Sam Hargrave. He directed the two Extraction movies on Netflix. He’s good. This is fun. Ridiculous. As plausible as a purple Moon peering up your basement steps. But fun.

CUT TO: CIA headquarters. Alfre Woodard plays a honcho there. She’s pissed off. She calls in Sidney Scofield (Bennett), who’s fresh from her niece’s birthday party, where she was secretly glugging vodka smuggled in a water bottle. That prisoner transport was a black-ops thing, which explains why the Marshals walked directly into a buzzsaw. “Havlock is in play,” Pissed Off CIA Agent Woodard says. We’ll soon learn that Sidney has something to do with this dangerous, volatile, insert adjective here asset, which finds her trapped in the jurisdictional no-person’s-land between the CIA and FBI. Which explains the vodka.

As Sidney lands in Fairbanks so fast she likely teleported there, we learn that Luke is skipping school to take his girlfriend to the family’s recently purchased cabin, which I’m sure is not at all on the path of one of the 18 serial drug murdering car diamond thief treasonous baby eaters who are loose in the woods. Kid’s gotta be totally safe! Sidney and Frank butt heads, work together and butt heads again. We follow the Unabomber beard guy for a bit, we watch as Sarah preps for triage in the ER in the wake of the crash, and we try to catch our breath as all these moving parts start locking together to make some sort of sense. Consider the premise established!

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Last Frontier takes the Yellowjackets plane crash — or maybe The Grey, take your pick — crosses it with the inmate transport of the movie Con Air and throws in U.S. Marshals from Justified that aren’t Raylan Givens. Not yet, anyway.

Our Take: The Last Frontier pilot is pedal-to-the-metal for the most part – even the quiet talky bits relay significant exposition addressing character, setting and interpersonal and political drama with ratatat velocity. It establishes Frank as a devoted family man who’s spent a few years in sleepy rural Alaska, but is still fully capable of upending the expectations of suits in D.C. who are ready to label him a damaged podunk also-ran; the long oner in which he very capably fights off bad guys and John Wick Headshots some of them into the great beyond is evidence enough. Bear witness. Do not underestimate. 

While the prickly interactions between Clarke and Bennett allow the actors to show off a bit in a rather rousing manner – this is a more compelling highlight than the action – thus establishing the front-of-camera talent. Behind it, the series lines up significant names as well, including director John Curran (The Painted Veil film) and writers Glenn Kessler (Damages) and Akela Cooper (M3GAN). Whether all these creators align beneath Bokenkamp is the question – this debut episode struggles with tonal inconsistency, ranging from over-the-top black comedy tinged with camp, to serious domestic drama. You might feel whiplash before the pilot works through a twist or two too many as it goes on, and on, inspiring the feeling that it needed to end sooner, maybe at the 45-minute mark instead of pushing to a slightly exhausting 60. But there’s no argument that what we’ve seen so far is smartly crafted entertainment, and not as capital-P Prestige as we may expect.

Sex and Skin: None so far.

Parting Shot: A slow zoom on Frank’s troubled expression.

Sleeper Star: If Woodard doesn’t get three-to-five fiery, righteous speeches before these 10 episodes wrap, I’ll be shocked. She’s already got three-quarters of one in the pilot.

Most Pilot-y Line: Frank speaks too soon – waaaayyyyyyyyy too soon: “The town’s been quiet as a smile since before I can remember.”

Our Call: Whether The Last Frontier can maintain this pace for the next nine hours is unlikely. But it’s a good start more than a rocky one (and note, future episodes reportedly stray from some of the core drama as Frank and co. track down loose escapees). Give it another ep or two before you move on. STREAM IT.

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Where To Watch The Last Frontier

Apple TV+ comes with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers and has just one ad-free streaming plan available for $13.99/month.

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John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.