To be honest, you can only watch the first 4 episodes. For first it is interesting, then it is bad. Carter won again, removing frank nonsense.
Lens Henriksen in his repertoire perfectly played all the roles and episodes, but he was endowed with a fantastic gift. He can look at the object and see what kind of maniac he is. It's beyond understanding. I mean, it can't be.
The only thing Carter revealed is the vices that drive maniacs. It is a kind of society in which the actors themselves live. And the rest to 'X-files' very far. And only for the first 4 episodes.
It is now people of art who happily survived with others the onset of the third millennium and December 21, 2012, around which there was no less hysteria, look at mysticism and all sorts of prophecies there with a more mocking look. But the last decade of the last century stubbornly proves that such things interested and encouraged the need to share their fears about the future. While “The X-Files” became the main ideological justification for the accumulated ufology and similar currents of knowledge about extraterrestrial intelligence, released a few years later “Millennium” – a kind of Kantian “thing in itself” from the cinema, standing alone and from “X-files” with sentimental agents Mulder and Scully, and from the no less fascinating “Psy Factor” with Dan Aykroyd in the image of the host.
The first TV project of Chris Carter instantly found a response in the hearts of the audience, and in Russia the number of fans reached a peak in the early two thousandth. The story of Frank Black can not boast of such impressive figures and somehow quietly went off the air about the same time, and not revealing to the end of all its secrets, as the main character played by Lance Henriksen. Only after a whole season it became clear that this series is not about another ghost hunter, but about all representatives of the human race, standing on the edge of the unknown or simply entangled in illusions and guesses.
Starting in the distant 1996 to shoot, the film crew hardly expected that a fairly simple story about the work of special services will be not just twisted into a live spiral, but also very tightly stitched in intellectual terms. The material of each series is carefully worked out, whether it is nightmare mock corpses, top-secret documents or the theory of crime itself. Unlike the first, purely detective season, the second is simply replete with scientific and historical data about the processes that at that time were not known to everyone even in the United States. Sometimes authors find themselves on a slippery slope, hinting at their own value system and its false essence, quietly turning people into real monsters. But not everyone. After the expiration of the term, we can also say with confidence that Agent Black remained himself - a modest and silent man with a long experience in the FBI and unknown in his soul, in whose life there are only two truths - his wife and daughter.
For all the mystery, Lance Henriksen’s character was unquestionable from a marketing perspective. The experienced actor, who once played in the fantastic saga “Alien”, gave the impression of a serious person, not like either an adventurer or someone who serves the interests of the state. Denying the laws of the genre, Frank Black moved cautiously in the only right direction, revealing crimes that defy ordinary perception. He is a genius, but all genius is sacrifice, doubt and loneliness. No one else is able to realize this to the extent that could be the only reasonable explanation of what is happening.
Frank Black's team remained almost unknown until the end, including Frank's closest partner in Peter Watts, brilliantly played by Terry O'Quinn. These quite ordinary people, once united in a separate orbital of public space to test their own vanity, brought additional intrigue to an already worthy scenario, despite the expected alignment and recurring structure of many series. Including the next one, you will again plunge into the atmosphere of doubt, fear and uncertainty, inspired by a creepy screensaver and feel the anticipation of another testimony to the agony of a world living in anticipation of a miracle or the end of the world, each determines for himself. And let the latter in the end was postponed to the “better” times, but more importantly, the Millennium turned out to be a guide not only to the subtle world, but also to the world of homo sapiens as a whole, a single collective subconscious on the scale of the entire planet, which destroys some, raises others, and makes it possible for others to become convinced of the infinity of the universal mind and human stupidity.
But what if the end of the world is true? Oh, I need to read the Bible, people wiped with burdock exactly understood this!
In the story, a retired FBI agent, trying to protect his family, leaves his job and changes the city of residence, the logic in his actions disappears, he joins not a mysterious underground group, but an ordinary organization, as he thinks, that works quite legally, and in fact does the same thing as the FBI, asks whether it made sense to abandon the FBI? The police and everything resort to his services, but in his life there are more problems than before, the group turns out to exist for a thousand years, and not a group at all, but a religious order, whose members are either preparing for the end of the world, or they are trying to organize it themselves, in any case they saw people right and left, literally.
Frank Black, despite what he sees, seems quite an adequate person, unlike his wife and daughter, whom I mentioned just for a tick, the ubiquitous Peter Watts, one of the members of the "Millennium" and judging by the shoes is not immortal, the agent Emma Hollis is a young and stupid, but for that, with a friend of a drug addict and an Alzheimer's daddy, it is a couple of down-to-to-ear police friends of Black, as if one of a bad man is not a man in the other way, who does not know /b>>
Fascinating places plot, spoil, biblical fairy tales, the part of them that refers to fantasies on the theme of the end of the world, New Testament heroes!
The ending of the film could be predicted at the beginning, but in the X-Files, the hero of Black emerges and we learn that not everything is as cloudy as we thought!
This is one of the most underrated series in the world, and perhaps the darkest creation of Chris Carter.
So what is the next brainchild of the legendary screenwriter? Briefly about the plot: this is a story about the impending apocalypse on the eve of the new millennium.
The main roles were performed by Lance Hendriksen and Megan Gallagher. Lance Henriksen handled his role flawlessly. And in general, he is a very unusual person, it is enough to read his biography on Wikipedia to understand what he is. It was as if he had divided himself into two parts. One part is a sullen private detective chasing criminals, and the other part is a caring head of the family, carefully guarding his wife and daughter from the horrors of this world.
In total, three seasons have been released and they all differ from each other in their structure. The composer was (as well as in the "X-Files" and "Lone Arrows") the notorious "Mark Snow". A little distraction, but I really want to draw a parallel between Chris Carter and David Lynch. The fact that the other has his own "personal" composer ( Lynch is Angelo Badalamenti), who writes music for all the director's work and thus complement each other, their duo becomes a common calling card.
The series is almost 50 minutes long, but I assure you it looks in one breath. I had such a thing that I was lost in time, watching another fascinating episode: it seemed just turned on, and once, and already credits. The series is absolutely not delayed, even the desire does not arise to rewind. The Millennium will even have a hypnotic effect on you, if you like the hopeless environment of the metropolis from the first shots.
There is nothing mystical or mysterious here. In the Millennium, everything is squat and vital. The main contingent of criminals are religious fanatics, maniacs and ritual killers.
Of course, this is a very good and fitting series, with its unusual moroseness and magnetic atmosphere. A must-watch for Chris Carter fans and detective lovers.
Evil and its creation on the threshold of a new era
This complex and fascinating series intersects with The X-Files, not only the presence of screenwriter Chris Carter in both projects, but also a few funny references traced in some episodes, as well as the fourth episode of the seventh season in The X-Files, which is the finale for Millennium. It was because of watching Carter’s main brainchild that I began watching his sadly forgotten series with Lance Henriksen, in order to find the aforementioned references out of curiosity and mentally link two great projects together. Although nothing but the last episode, they are not so connected.
The synopsis given here does not reflect the most important thing. In short, “Millennium” follows FBI agent Frank Black and his family, whom he cares about, without allowing any threats to harm his wife and daughter. He is also a member of a secret group of former FBI agents (the series is named after her). The group believes in the end of the world in the year 2000 (think about the time of the release of the series), with the advent of a new millennium, due to which monstrous murders occur everywhere, and religious or any other cults distort reality in various ways. In general, a lot of bad things happen that Frank faces more and more, and fears for the family and the responsibility to protect it prevent him from living calmly. Soon, digging into the origins of the group, he realizes that it is also risky to be in it, and you can not trust everyone.
The downside of the series is the severity of perception. I am convinced that I am not the only one who thinks so, having read other reviews and reviews. The second and third seasons are much easier than the first, probably due to the adaptation to the atmosphere, plot and characters. Sometimes you watch one of the episodes and realize that you do not understand anything, although you did not miss anything. It's a bit complicated, but there's still an interest in this approach.
It is also worth noting that the series is extremely dark, exciting and serious, which can both attract and alienate. Chris Carter, as the main writer, does not aim to make every episode a detective. Sometimes you know the killer from the first minute, but you still tirelessly follow, for example, his subsequent capture or new murders, and the feeling of the presence of evil and the presence of dark tones create a special leisurely heat. Unlike the X-Files, there is no fiction here, the horror comes from the phenomena of human hatred and malice.
It is also interesting that all three seasons are different in one way or another.
In the first, there was a typical scenario for detective and police series, when each episode tells about a new case, and the season ends with one unpleasant incident, continued in the second; the second, in turn, is more built around the group “Millennium” and Frank Black’s attitude to it, and the last series radically change the whole plot; the third is replenished with new characters and already covers the attention of not only Frank. In other series you do not notice the difference of seasons from each other, but here it stands out.
It seems that there is nothing more to write about the Millennium, because there will be spoilers, but I got a certain pleasure from the project. This series is not monotonous, a little amateur and the main thing that makes you think. Some episodes are very original (as, for example, with devils that personified the essence of the people talking), and empathy with the main character and his family adds a script of emotionality. Surely "Millennium" is not suitable for everyone (and even not all fans of detective "long-playing" films), but personally I was pleased to get acquainted with it, albeit not immediately. Chris Carter earned another credit for his irrepressible imagination, which gave rise not only to the iconic and legendary "X-Files", but also the almost underrated "Millennium".
8 out of 10
In the 16th century, at the Council of Trent, condemning Protestant teaching, the Catholic Church made one very significant decision, frankly, historical: namely, the bishops decreed that the sacrament does not depend on the personality of the priest - for example, the sacrament of baptism. Even when committed by a wicked detractor of Rome, a cruel Calvinist pastor, baptism remains a gift from above, and confession to such a clergyman receives apostolic release. Unfortunately, in a country proud of its democracy, not only this elementary rule, but even the postulate shared by all churches that the hour of the Doomsday cannot be known to man, it may well not be included in the religious beliefs of an exemplary citizen, for example, a maniac.
Most of the maniacs Frank Black (Lance Henrickson) deals with not only eat their forbidden pleasures, but also punish, in view of the approaching millenarian milestone – the two-thousandth year. And this is their deep kinship with Frank, who knows how to penetrate the mind of the killer in some mysterious way. After all, Frank seeks to give the sisters earrings, however - guided by the laws of a particular state. The police, the feds, the representatives of the mysterious group "Millennium" spin, like extras, at the behest of Frank. Frank also has an alibi - a traditional wife and daughter, about a safe world for whom Frank cares, but the unsentimental viewer, of course, they are indifferent, like plastic. Here it becomes clear why, unlike the X-Files, this project of Chris Carter, despite all the appetizing macabra, did not become legendary. Mulder and Scully are alone before the power of the state machine, caught in the hands of conspirators and scoundrels, they are ready to wring their necks because they are not satisfied that “the truth is out there”, and here is all disinformation, presented with the most brazen grin. For what these two and loved so much that the audience passed through the tedious sixth season, consisting of almost one "plugs" and heavy wit. In a world flooded with information, it's a shame that more than nine-tenths is a surrogate for ruminants. And the wife croaked mount even under the dinosaurs could.
Frank has one motivation: he does things because he can do them, the same core-dislocated logic as maniacs. When the sixth episode of the first season begins with a mockery of the murderer over the confession and the moral appearance of a confessing Jesuit, and then Frank goes to investigate the massacre of priests, it is not Frank, but Carter who betrays himself, winking at the public “in the subject”. It happened in Tacoma Town. Anyone familiar with Gnosticism will easily rearrange the letters in this word, similar to the Hebrew name for the primordial Abyss, and decipher the anagram. Did it work? The hint of the basic myth of Gnosticism explains more. Disdain for the Church, indications that the highest world power is inhuman-cruel, for it is only the power of the demiurge, the sad demon of matter, confidence that the world will end its existence with a fiery catastrophe, not a transformation, interest in individuals who destroy the unworthy creation of the demiurge, in other words, serial murderers. And, of course, this amazing ability of Frank to look through the eyes of a murderer from inside his skull - just a metaphor for gnosis, knowledge beyond the evil material world, which, judging by "Millennium", Frank shares with maniacs. After all, they just want to escape from the world and want to, having previously “liberated” someone from the shackles for company. Oh, Frank understands that, because even lemmings feel that way. But the lemming is not mistaken about the fact that these feelings lead to some truths about the higher foundations of being. For example, the coming end of the universe. Gnostics are not lemmings.
The crimes of the sixth episode are not directed at individual vicious priests, but at the sacraments and faith themselves. The visible lack of supreme justice, Providence in the affairs of this age breeds malice and violence, pushes to challenge God. Or to blame God, to recognize Him as criminal, to equate with the demiurge. And we wouldn't be talking about the Trentian dogma if Chris Carter in the last of the opuses about Mulder and Scully, X-Files: I want to believe" did not put forward an "argument" against the church about a corrupt priest. Having read the Millennium, we know that this is not just a tribute to the fashionable “witch hunt” – paedophiles in cassocks.
