By 
It sometimes seems like Apple TV+ doesn’t actually want people to watch their shows, so low-key is their promotion. So if you didn’t know there was a new twisty thriller released on Apple starring Cate Blanchett, created and directed by Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón and based on a best selling novel by Renee Knight then don’t blame yourself.
This is Disclaimer*, a sometimes playful but ultimately troubling cat and mouse thriller about a vengeful father and a woman trying to bury her past, which talks about privilege, power, and perception, and it’s very much worth watching.
Blanchett plays Catherine, a beautiful, wealthy journalist with a seemingly charmed life that she shares with her rich, indolent wine-snob husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and distant grown up son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). But Catherine’s world is about to be shattered courtesy of Stephen (Kevin Kline), a man whose past intersects unexpectedly with Catherine’s and is out for revenge via a tell-all novel about her.
This is a very twisty slow reveal show that unfolds over seven tense episodes so that’s pretty much all we can say in terms of the specifics of the plot. Particularly since Disclaimer* is a show which plays with perspective and what people choose to believe – the audience included. In episode one, for example, don’t expect to entirely know what’s going on.
Here we meet a young couple, Jonathan and Sasha, on an idyllic holiday in Italy where they take pictures, annoy the locals and have lots of sex. Elsewhere, in another timeline, lonely widower Stephen is giving away his late wife’s belongings, saving only her favorite cardigan, which he opts to wear on top of his ragged vest and shirt. His career as a school teacher has come to an end in a wave of intolerance for the children. He has more than enough burden to carry. So when he finds items his wife Nancy (Leslie Manville – so rest assured she’ll be back) has hidden before she passed some nine years ago, he suddenly finds a new purpose.
Kline is wonderful as Stephen, at first achingly sad but as the show progresses increasingly cantankerous, taking malicious joy in his mission to throw a hand grenade into Catherine’s life. As Catherine, Blanchett is exquisite – chilly, stunning, beautifully dressed and sharp as a knife – while Baron Cohen is perfect as her arrogant, entitled husband, reveling in his closeness with his son, while she is left out in the cold.
Sitting vaguely within the subgenre of crime shows about beautiful rich people – think The Undoing, Big Little Lies, The White Lotus et al – Disclaimer *is a cut above. It’s a smart script adapted from the book by Cuarón which includes narration from Indira Varma drip feeding us moments of the characters’ interior lives. Regardless of status these are all people that routinely lie, make judgments about one another and find it almost impossible to effectively communicate.
Not always entirely plausible, but nonetheless highly compelling as a thriller Disclaimer* is at its best when it’s messing with assumptions related to age, class and gender, or when Kline’s Stephen is delighting in his misanthropy. It comes with a killer ending, too, which has something deeply unpleasant, and unfortunately resonant, to say about relationships.
A classy project from a top-notch director, if this were on Sky or Netflix, we’d expect audiences to be devouring it. Episodes drop weekly and on this occasion that’s a good thing – do yourself a favor and let this mystery unfold with time to digest all its nuances.
Episodes one and two of Disclaimer* are available on Apple TV+ now.
The post Disclaimer* Review: Revenge is Bitter Sweet in Alfonso Cuarón’s Slick Thriller appeared first on Den of Geek.
