Miami. The city at the gates of the Florida Everglades, America’s largest tropical wilderness. Home of alligators, crocodiles, panthers. A popular film location, especially for crime series like “Miami Vice”, “Dexter” or “Bloodline”, because particularly charged with this threateningly humid atmosphere around the Florida Keys: topographically with the proximity to the immigration countries Mexico or Cuba, symbolically at the border between high-tech civilization and raw nature. That’s how charged the Apple TV series “20 Years” is about five friends whose lives are dramatically changed by a class reunion in Miami.
The basic motive is not that new. A clique whose foundation based on friendship, trust and loyalty is put to the test because there may be a few things, secrets, that are not shared among friends.
The viewer does not need eight episodes to clarify Alejandro’s accident. The series reveals early on what happened back then and draws tension from how the network of friends is being destroyed more and more by the instilling distrust, being eaten away from the inside.
Sometimes all too strikingly illustrated by this contrast, the setting, by the high-rise images of urban, cosmopolitan Miami (in which Pedro as an aspiring politician and Marcos make a career as a plastic surgeon) and the waters of the Florida Keys, where the secret of the tragic Beach Party The year 2000 – with a discarded videotape – is literally buried.
A murder is added, the five don’t stay five. The whole thing is more character-driven than plot-driven. Which doesn’t detract from the suspense, especially since the book gives the viewer sugar with two stubborn, contrasting detectives – type old hand and rookie, male and female – and is supported by the strong cast (including the Oscar-nominated actresses Marina de Tavira and Rosie Perez and José MarÃa Yazpik).
Director and producer Gideon Raff is behind 20 Years and asks similar questions in this thriller as in his hit series Homeland. Which friend to trust? Who betrays whom? Are you having sex with your worst enemy? Whose facade will last? InMiami.
