Prime Video lists their new show, Consultantstarring Christoph Waltzlike a black comedy, but to be honest, we don’t find anything funny about it. A two-time Academy Award winner, Waltz has never been creepier, and laughs are few and far between in this grim portrait of a mysterious consultant who appears one day to replace the brutally gunned down CEO and founder of Comp Ware, Los Angeles. game application company. You might have thought Waltz was creepiest in his breakout role as German SS officer Hans Landa in 2009. Quentin Tarantino’With Inglourious Basterds. But, in fact, you probably have not yet seen an actor more bizarrely twisted and sinister than in Consultant. This Waltz character brings some chilling moments to the small screen in a rare foray.
Christoph Waltz is just waltzing straight into
Comp Ware appears to be another successful Gen Z startup gaming company offering downloadable games that can be played, such as Mr. Wang’s Jungle Adventure and other handheld applications. But beneath the noisy office floors and sleek glass executive offices lies a company that is struggling to stay afloat financially. The founder of the company is only 20 years old, and despite the fact that he has everything he needs to develop the next biggest gaming hobby, Sang (Brian Yun) neglected other important aspects of creating and maintaining a successful business. His unwillingness or inability to manage the company’s books has left him open to others who might want to get hold of the precious gaming merchandise and let him reach his full potential. So when Sang signs a mysterious contract with an even more mercurial consultant named Regus Patoff (Waltz), he unwittingly hands over the reins of Comp Ware to a man who had just shown up at his office unannounced just fifteen minutes earlier. And in a laid-back startup, things get really weird.
Patov has an unusual management style
Upon arrival, Regus Patoff proves he will have a difficult ship. His first task is to order everyone who works remotely to be in the office within an hour or risk being fired. When a disabled woman in a wheelchair shows up just five minutes after the deadline, he kicks her out of the building and fires her. He then threatens to fire the other person because he doesn’t like the way he smells. This can be seen as a strict management style or just outright cruelty. When a swanky office on the executive floor opens, Patoff initiates “every man for himself,” mercilessly free for anyone to see who wants a vacant apartment. This leads to a frantic fight that results in one woman being carried out of the office, kicking and screaming like a mental patient, by a group of colleagues. Patoff is definitely unorthodox and wants to shake things up, but where the hell is HR in all of this? Instilling a culture of discrimination and intimidation and eschewing meritocracy is hardly the most effective and efficient way to boost morale and increase efficiency.
Craig (Nat Wolf) wants to know more about this strange new consultant who came in literally overnight and turned their quiet workplace into a hellish environment. So, one night, he accompanies Patov to a boyfriend’s party at an upscale Los Angeles nightclub. What begins as a nasty evening turns downright sinister as Craig finds himself at the center of a kidnapping. When a man in a tied potato sack is thrown into the back seat of the SUV he is riding, Craig has a full-blown panic attack. Patoff is very calm and collected, telling Craig about the ordeal and explaining the kidnapping as just a ruse to test Craig’s resolve in a crisis. Are you joking? Later, after a quick and informal brainstorming session with her supervisors, Elaine (Brittany O’Grady) half-jokingly suggests that they steal an elephant and release it outside in downtown Los Angeles to attract customers for their new jungle-based app. Naturally, Patoff thinks it’s a great idea and tasks her with providing the logistics (including selling sexual favors to an abusive ex-boyfriend) to make the marketing move.
Is Patoff even human?
After several weeks of sabotage by Patoff both in the workplace and with his fiancee Patty (Amy Carrero), Craig decides to do some digging into the history of their humanoid, almost robotic new consultant, who has made it his mission to disrupt his once-productive, albeit slightly unmotivated, lifestyle. He discovers that for several years Patoff has been paying a local jeweler large sums of money to create a human skeleton made entirely of pure gold. But it just seems to raise more questions than it answers. Is Patoff some kind of alien made out of gold? Is he some new humanoid creature from some lab, made to be assimilated? All of these aspects are perfect for an actor of Waltz’s caliber, as his flat affect and deaf attitude only serve to reveal the mystery of who or what he really stands for.
As far as being truly diabolical and insane, it’s hard to imagine any character rising to the level of SS officer Hans Lafta in Inglourious BasterdsSo while Regus Patoff doesn’t get the same type of script as Tarantino to work in Consultant, he manages to bring his uncanny mix of German austerity with a splash of misplaced enthusiasm. All of this adds up to yet another beautifully creepy and wildly eccentric protagonist that turns an ordinary show into a compelling story. If you are planning to check it out, you have been warned! There are some extremely uncomfortable scenes that will test your meddling as a spectator.
Source: Collider
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