There was precious little emotion on display at the end of McMafia – from James Norton’s protagonist Alex Godman or the viewers I expect. The finale was easy to enjoy but hard to take seriously and if Godman didn’t seem to care a great deal about the type of man he had become then he and McMafia’s creators could hardly expect us to.
There was no sign of celebration or even relief from Godman when he won his war with ruthless Russian mobster Vadim Kalyagin: simultaneously the most predictable and improbable denouement possible. Even though Godman had achieved his aim of destroying Vadim he was still negotiating deals that ensured huge amounts of heroin and cocaine would be safely smuggled into Europe.
‘I don’t know who he is anymore,’ his irritating (ex)girlfriend Rebecca said, rolling off the clichés. ‘I don’t think he even knows himself.’
That was one way of saying the character didn’t really add up. How much better it would have been if Alex had been strangled, stabbed, or shot by Vadim (or all three, knowing him).
After all, settling feuds with violence was what Vadim did. By contrast, Godman was a hedge fund manager from the City and so hopelessly out of his depth he had chipped up in Moscow without a bodyguard let alone a gun, and just after Vadim’s daughter Natasha had been shot dead in a bungled attempt to assassinate Vadim ordered by Alex’s father. Not great timing…
Admittedly of the two Godman was the hero – or meant to be. But his moral compass was so corrupt, it mattered little to the audience and in any case was largely a hollow victory. Godman fired the shot that killed Vadim but if anything he was only putting him out of his misery. The hard part had been done by a hitman who had mown Vadim down with a sub-machine gun.
The previous episode with Alex on the plane heading for Moscow in blissful ignorance about Vadim’s daughter and his father’s assassin.
Their showdown was by delayed by three false alarms.
Godman was intercepted before he’d even entered the country, pulled over at Passport Control, and put in a cell where he was greeted by Vadim’s lawyer/henchman Colonel Ilya Federova (still rocking a black polo neck, naturally). <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
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