The dog-napped pooch in the prologue will be De Luca’s easiest task. Finding Augosto Caetani’s younger daughter Alice will require six full episodes. The silver-maned hotelier still has confidence in De Luca, but his older daughter and general manager Adele has already grown tired of their employee (and his tendency to sleep with grateful guests). Regardless, the half-Italian former U.S. Marine has the streets smarts they need, because that is where he was partially raised.
In the meantime, De Luca still provides his regular room service. There will be a wealthy guest to find lost at sea, red tape to cut so a Jewish guest can repatriate his late mother’s body, and a mysterious orphan to protect from traffickers. It is mostly entertaining, low impact do-gooding.
However, episode 3, “April,” which should have been the strongest episode, turns out to be a gross misfire, when De Lcua’s titular comrade, April Mackenzie, still in the Corps, guilts the fixer into helping her commit unvarnished treason. Frankly, her conduct and De Luca’s nonchalant response will outrage most veterans and military families—and understandably so. Seriously, selling classified military codes for money meets any definition of treason, but apparently Arlanch, Bucaccio, and Parkhill believe Marines like De Luca and Mackenzie would merely consider it regrettable but acceptable behavior.
As De Luca, Jesse Williams has the right physicality and he handles the light Magnum P.I.-ish moments well. However, he lacks the kind of fierceness the character needs during scenes of high tension. He simply lacks the gravitas and the steeliness to compare to Chris Pratt in The Terminal List or Alan Ritchson in Reacher.
Tomasso Ragno is also wonderfully suave as old man Caetani and Jordan Alexandra is undeniably charismatic as De Luca’s non-jokey, non-cringy associate, Genny, who slowly but surely develops some appealing heat with the fixer. On the other hand, Antonio Gerardi and Sam Haygarth are all shtick, all the time, as De Luca’s other two freelance cronies, Bigne and Tancredi. Honestly, their kvetching frequently throws the show off balance.
To its credit, Prime Video seems to finally recognize their most successful shows are military themed, or feature leads whose identity is significantly defined by their service. Unfortunately, Arlanch, Bucaccio, and Parkhill clearly have no understanding of such figures. The early episodes are okay for some armchair tourism, but the marginal returns start to steeply diminish with the third episode. Frankly, it just should have been so much better. Not smart enough to recommend, Hotel Costiera starts streaming today (9/24) on Prime Video.
