High Value Target TV Review: Joel Kinnaman leads The Hunt for Saddam in this by-the-numbers political thriller

Plot: Set against the backdrop of one of the most consequential military operations in recent history, the series explores the high-stakes exchanges between CIA officer John Nixon and Saddam Hussein. As Nixon seeks answers from the former Iraqi leader in his search for weapons of mass destruction, he is forced to confront the far-reaching consequences of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ramifications that would reverberate around the world for decades to come.

Review: Of the major geopolitical events of the 21st century, the War on Terror and the Bush Administration’s hunt for weapons of mass destruction rank as one of the most significant. On the heels of September 11th, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the fallout of no WMDs being discovered remains a touchy subject across the globe. In the twenty years since his execution, the legacy of Saddam Hussein has been largely overshadowed by various wars and tyrants being overthrown, but the dominoes surrounding what happened have never fully disappeared. The new limited series High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam dramatizes the work of one of the key figures in finding the Iraqi leader and the three years that followed. Featuring Joel Kinnaman in the lead role, High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam stretches the complex political elements into an overlong and somewhat bland chronicle that feels like it is less an exploration of the various factions involved while bordering on an almost jingoistic perspective.

Joel Kinnaman plays John Nixon, the CIA agent whose book, Debriefing the President, inspired High Value Target. Nixon is an expert on Iraq and longs to be a field operative but is stuck in an office working on intelligence research. When President George W. Bush announces that the United States will begin operations to capture Saddam Hussein, Nixon sees an opportunity to get directly involved in the apprehension and capture of the Iraqi president. While Nixon’s wife, Rebecca (Rebecca Night), supports him in his career ambitions, John feels indebted to take care of her through her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. John’s father, Charles (Tom Berenger), is an Army veteran of multiple wars and decries the need to overthrow Saddam at any cost while also talking down to John’s desk job rather than being a true soldier like John’s deceased brother. John wants badly to get Saddam to prove himself to his father and to himself, and finally gets his chance, but that is just the beginning of the story.

While there are some solid, intense moments leading to the capture of Saddam Hussein, played by Waleed Zuaiter, as well as the actual Hussein seen in archival footage, High Value Target‘s subtitle is a bit misleading. Yes, the series looks at the hunt for Saddam and dives into his eventual capture, but a significant portion of the series focuses on his incarceration and eventual trial, with John forging something of a bond with the dictator and advocating for him not to be executed. High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam hits you over the head with some pretty bland conference room sequences featuring John arguing with his boss, Angela Jenkins (Talia Balsam), as well as Gabe Vardakas (Christopher McDonald), but the more interesting moments come when Joel Kinnaman and Waleed Zuaiter play Nixon and Hussein face to face. Reminiscent of Rami Malek and Russell Crowe as Douglas Kelley and Hermann Göring in the World War II drama Nuremberg, this series is most interesting when we see the conversations and debates between the protagonist and his adversary, and how their dynamic shifts.

The most interesting parts of High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam are the ones that involve Samir (Dar Salim), a soldier on the ground and a key member of the squad that brought Hussein in. The series does a good job of keeping the series historically accurate, including the execution of Saddam Hussein and the illicit cell phone recording that showed his death. The recreation side of the series reduces the quality of the series, with the execution scene giving me chills as I recalled how eerily similar it was to the real footage. Waleed Zuaiter does a great job playing Hussein and humanizing him, but not at the expense of condemning the horrific and monstrous actions he took. On the other end, Paul Ryan’s brief scenes as George W. Bush feel like caricatures rather than giving us anything close to nuance in the way the president looked and acted when the truth about there being no WMDs came to light.

The opening credits to High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam gave me some clue as to where this series would be going, with the odd choices made in crediting it as “A Series By Leslie Greif” and with WATCH IT credited as a co-distributor alongside TNT. WATCH IT is a Middle Eastern platform which is airing the series before it debuts domestically and the feel of how both the United States and the countries surrounding Iraq are portrayed feels strange. At times, Tom Berenger’s character feels like a satire of Americans, with some of his dialogue sounding as if it were written in English, translated into another language, and then translated back into English. It would be easy to blame the use of AI in helping script this, but I blame the human writers. It could also be that there is no need for this to have been turned into a limited series from a feature film, as more than half of these episodes could have been cut entirely, and it would not have negatively impacted it.

Joel Kinnaman is a solid actor and has done great work in his career. He does a good job in High Value Target, but in expanding this story to eight episodes, creators Daniel Stiepleman and Jonathan Wakeham, along with writer/director Leslie Greif and director Tamer Muhammad Mustafa, have taken what could have been an indictment of the United States’ takedown of an enemy regime and made it boring. There is a lot of anger and arguing going on in this series, but by the final episode, you won’t really care about where anyone ends up. Maybe it is because John Nixon just isn’t an interesting enough personality, but the series fails to add anything to his tale to make it worth spending eight hours with. High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam is boring, bland, and not nearly worth your viewing time. Watch W. or Vice instead, and you will have a much better time.

High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam premieres on September 13th on TNT.