‘Vanished’ review: Kaley Cuoco thriller disappoints
Kaley Cuoco seems to have caught the international thriller bug. The actress continued her decade-plus role on “The Big Bang Theory” with two seasons of “The Flight Attendant,” the globe-trotting story of an alcoholic airline employee who is in over her head. Now she stars in and serves as executive producer of the MGM+ series “Vanished,” a more compressed but broadly similar story shot and filmed largely in Marseille. Perhaps the decade-plus he spent on a Burbank backlot sparked a little wanderlust in the Emmy-nominated artist.
Like Cassie from “The Flight Attendant,” Cuoco’s character in “Vanished” is a woman with an interesting yet distinctly civilian job that’s over her head. Instead of waking up next to a corpse, however, archaeologist Alice Monroe boards a train with Tom Parker (Sam Claflin of “The Hunger Games” franchise), her saintly doctor boyfriend of several years, for a romantic getaway to Arles – only for Tom to step away and never return to their seats. In a device far too overused in this genre, an opening flashback indicates that Alice’s amateur investigation into where Tom went will put her in mortal danger. But it doesn’t last long either: Directed by “Spice World” producer Barnaby Thompson and written by Thompson’s son Preston, “Vanished” spans just four episodes, leading to a rushed conclusion that doesn’t have time to explain the implications of the sensational revelations. (David Hilton is credited as co-creator with Preston.)
As a result of this brevity and the aforementioned parallels to “The Flight Attendant,” “Vanished” often feels like a smaller redux of a mode that Cuoco has already explored more extensively and deeply. Alice has the same sarcastic charm as other products from Cuoco’s comedic background, but here the performance feels like it’s fighting against an otherwise downright dramatic tone. I kept wishing that ‘Vanished’ would play a part in the comedy of Alice’s fish-out-of-water situation; perhaps the plot could be a parody of the modern dating concept of ghosting, but with murderers and human traffickers instead of unanswered texts. After all, Tom leaves immediately after Alice suggests that the two settle in New Jersey, where she has just gotten a job at Princeton, rather than meeting sporadically in exotic locations as their schedules permit. Instead, the humor in the series is rare and often rooted in stereotypes so stale that I wasn’t sure if the joke was intentional, such as a local police chief (Simon Abkarian) refusing to meet a panicking Alice because he’s late to the movies.
Due to Tom’s disappearance, Claflin is largely absent outside of flashbacks that show the couple meeting in Jordan, where Alice was digging for artifacts and Tom was distributing vaccines for a pro-refugee NGO called SOS Global. In a strange way, it’s a nice change for the male half of a heterosexual relationship to be the subject of such slow-motion, sepia-toned nostalgia, motivating his partner in her current search for answers. Regardless of which gender gets this treatment, though, it’s still a reductive way to convey character, and we don’t get much insight into Alice and Tom’s relationship beyond her understandable attraction to a friendly counselor with chiseled cheekbones.
With Tom gone to God knows where, Alice teams up with French journalist Hélène (Karin Viard) – who happens to be on the train when he goes missing – to track him down. Their investigation takes them to SOS Global’s Marseille office, where Tom’s colleague Alex (Matthias Schweighöfer) provides context about his state of mind. If “Vanished” isn’t particularly enticing as a mystery, it’s at least a useful visual tour of an exciting, underrated city, from its rocky coast to graffiti-lined public squares. Shooting on location pays off, even if I don’t like the way shots of a predominantly Middle Eastern neighborhood are used to emphasize Alice’s sense of vulnerability and danger after Tom disappears. Cuoco’s professional success has given her the opportunity to travel the world on the clock, which she has taken full advantage of – but it may be time for the actor to settle down in the United States, or at least change things up.
All four episodes of “Vanished” are now available to stream on MGM+.
