Weapons | Good berets from Russia

Let’s file an urgent matter before dissecting the latest intrigues of the series The weapons from TVA: we must say JTF16 and not GTF16 when we talk about the elite commando who terrorizes – and martyrs – several soldiers from the fictitious Kanawata military base, in Lanaudière.

JTF stands for “Join Task Force”. A joint task force led by the terrifying Colonel Allan Craig (François Papineau), supported by two mountains of treacherous and violent muscles, namely Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Dallaire (Frédéric Millaire Zouvi) and Warrant Officer Jean-Moïse Caron (Jérémie Jacob ).

The section of Armes involving the JTF16 commando, the purchase of polonium from the Russian underworld and the suspicions of espionage hanging over doctor Maria Frolova (Victoria Diamond) is captivating. It’s rare that a classic soap opera envelops us with so much paranoia and secret stories worthy of a Tom Clancy detective novel.

Victoria’s father, the alcoholic Vasili Frolov (Gregory Hlady), was too perky and naive to slip under our radar of shady characters, hello. It was he who was photographed with the head of the Russian mafia in Montreal, Yegor Martschenko (Vlado Stokanic).

At the same time, let’s not exonerate naive Victoria too quickly. Devoted wife of hero Louis-Philippe Savard (Vincent-Guillaume Otis), Victoria lied about Warrant Officer Caron. She knows him and the surveillance videos show her with him when he introduces polonium into the military hospital, polonium which will contaminate the fluid of soldier Tarek Elfassi (Tarek Bendahmane) and kill him.

Would Victoria use her crooked father as a screen to scheme without attracting attention? What did she know about the operation orchestrated by JTF16 to poison Tarek Elfassi? Like her Russian dad, Victoria seems too pure and innocent, which raises more than reasonable doubts. Victoria is hiding something from her husband, but what?

The murder that launched The weapons remains a great enigma, which progresses slowly, I find. We still do not understand what pushed Xavier Augustin (Rodney Alexandre), the brother of Wesley (Irdens Exantus), to murder, in a state of panic, his colleague from the JTF16 squad.

Viewers know that Xavier was then liquidated by Craig’s men, but not Wesley, who imagines his brother in prison in Edmonton. On this subject, the skeleton that policewoman Kim Falardeau (Eve Landry) and Lieutenant-Colonel Savard dug up is obviously not that of Xavier. Its state of decomposition is far too advanced to fit the chronology of events.

I like it a lot Dumas on - and I like it just as much The weapons at VAT, no quibble here. The enigmatic character of Catherine Sergerie (Larissa Corriveau), the “spin doctor” of the military base, is fascinating. Major Sergerie takes refuge behind her permanent smile and her apparent benevolence to better control the information and operate one step ahead of her boss. She is a snake woman, silent, snaring and dangerous.

By investing in The weaponswe must accept certain conventions linked to the budgetary constraints of a Quebec television series. It’s obvious that the war scenes in Afghanistan were not filmed in the dusty streets of Kabul, but in a hangar at MELS studios. The weapons does not have the same financial arsenal as an American series like Homeland. You have to live with it.

But when the story captivates us, we can believe many things. Like the efficiency of the emergency room at Saint-Vincent hospital in STAT or the ridiculously low number of journalists on a daily basis The City Dweller In Witches.

In The weaponsauthor Pierre-Marc Drouin moves away from sentimental issues and rushes into action coated with adrenaline. The tortuous journey of recruit Mick Vanier (Émile Schneider), known as Rambo, takes us into the captivating twists and turns of the army within the army, a theme never explored on Quebec television. It’s a notch more panicking when we know that this type of elite unit really exists, here as elsewhere.

Mick Vanier, a military enthusiast, often asks the question that runs through the minds of all fans of the Armes : is this legal, what JTF16 does? And does the general staff know about it?

Allan Craig’s response comes back in the form of a boomerang: is it moral to want to defend ourselves against attacks from the Russians or the Iranians? The end therefore justifies the means.

After having doubts, Mick returned to the ranks, subject to the toxic authority of Colonel Craig like his comrade Aiden Larochelle (Alex Godbout), the master corporal who revealed his true face, that of a mole infiltrated in the camp recruits. We thought he was good, this soldier Larochelle, even though he too entered the crinqués network.

All that remains is the police officer Kim, Lieutenant-Colonel Savard and perhaps the lawyer Olivier Laroche (Mickaël Gouin) to untangle all these threads, against a backdrop of extreme tension and distrust. The distressing music of Armes accentuates its “psychosis” side, which recalls the stifling atmosphere ofUnit 9.

Still in the company of Eve Landry and François Papineau, but without Céline Bonnier, who went to investigate in Sainte-Piété to find pieces of the foot of her murdered father, who ultimately did not die, OK? We don’t leave the Horned God in a corner, not even in a remote corner of northern Ontario.