Harlan Coben's "Fool Me Once" Hits Netflix Again
Eight episodes adapting the novel of the same name, starring Sam Worthington as a protagonist on the run searching for his missing son.
David Burroughs is unjustly serving the fifth year of a life sentence in a maximum-security prison for the murder of his young son, Matthew. A heinous crime for which he has always declared his innocence, but his version was not believed in court, and he now faces that life imprisonment.
In Fool Me Once, the protagonist's now resigned prison routine is abruptly disrupted when his ex-sister-in-law Rachel, an investigative journalist, visits him, bringing a recently taken photo from a crowded theme park. On the right side of the image appears a child of the same age Matthew would be today, marked by the same unique and unmistakable birthmark on his face. Convinced that his son is still alive and that he has become the center of a subtle conspiracy, David is helped to escape and sets out to track down the child, thus trying to prove his innocence while the entire country is on his heels.
The Logic of Thrillers According to Harlan Coben
The inexhaustible vein of intricate thrillers derived from literature has found a true "golden goose" in recent years: Harlan Coben, whose novels, primarily adapted into series, become major successes in the streaming market. The latest piece in this successful collaboration between the writer and streaming giants is Fool Me Once, a Netflix exclusive that brings the 2023 novel of the same name to live-action in eight episodes.
A genre that seems to know no crisis of consensus, where the mechanism of suspense takes precedence over the psychological plausibility of the characters or the story itself. Those familiar with Coben's style will know that they can expect an infinite number of plot twists and various assorted contrivances, with a story that always tries to surprise the viewer without fear of exaggeration. But on this occasion, the liberties of an overly pyrotechnic screenplay are compensated by a high pace that maintains constant suspense until the last episode and by a diverse and capable cast.
Faces and Turns
A cast led by a solid Sam Worthington, who will find formidable friends and foes played by Britt Lower, Milo Ventimiglia, and Madeleine Stowe among many others. The protagonist is grappling with an almost uninterrupted sequence of chases, more or less partial revelations, and cliffhangers placed with millimeter precision at the end of each episode. Fool Me Once, also thanks to the relatively lean average duration of forty-five minutes per installment, is a series to binge-watch, a diversion that flows quickly and is forgotten just as quickly.
Nineties atmospheres emerge in certain passages, starting with an opening that vaguely recalls a great classic like The Fugitive (1993), and the whole works for large stretches, managing various subgroups of characters, each grappling with their own parallel submission to that of the escapee, ready to do anything to find out if his beloved son is indeed still alive and where he is. It must be said that despite the abundance of material, the story would have made more sense in a generally more contained timeframe, with some quite evident redundancies that risk further highlighting the numerous narrative artificialities. But in its nature as a production to be consumed in binge-watching, Fool Me Once works and never looks back, with all the pros and cons that entails.