Brazilian Netflix series Good morning Veronica returns for its second season with its titular heroine, One Dragon Tattoo, well, you know. The first installment of episodes of the series was released in 2020 and adapted the crime novels by Raphael Montes; It established star Taina Muller’s gritty on-screen presence, in which she played underrated cop-turned-hardcore vigilante Veronica Torres. I mean, she’s practically Batman now. She’s been through some heavy shit – which is recapitulated here in all its exaggeration – and it certainly doesn’t seem likely to get any easier over the next six episodes.
opening shot: A slow crawl across the floor. We see an iguana. A motorcycle. A person lying on his stomach on a cliff looking down at some shady people doing shady things.
The essentials: But first, a recap: mild-mannered police officer Veronica was embroiled in a deep conspiracy involving a serial killer, an “orphanage” and mobsters – and it all tied to her own trauma, an incident in which her cop father killed her mother and attempted suicide but ended up in a nursing home in a vegetative state with severe brain damage. As it turned out, the mafia was behind it, accusing her father of investigating their criminal enterprise. And now she’s mad. She will take care of them. She faked her death so she could infiltrate the bad idiots, and there she is now, on the cliff, taking pictures of crooks doing shit.
We see black trucks, people in sunglasses, bartering in duffel bags, a gun, a man with his face covered and a gold ring with a seal. Veronica shoots, but this time with a gun. Headshot. She jumps on the motorbike and drives off, followed by a woman in a truck. They exchange shots, but Veronica escapes and returns to her secret hideout, where she has a secret bulletin board full of photos, maps, and documents outlining the conspiracy. But this is season two, and it’s a different chapter in its story, which calls for a refurbishment of the bulletin board, with some new names and faces and words written on paper with question marks behind them, indicating they’re not all the information knows on the thing yet. you know how to do it
Of course, her husband and children think she’s Kaputskies; Knowing her secret, her confidante Prata (Adriano Garib) babysits her children and allows her in her old house to sniff the hair of her sleeping children. Meanwhile, that guy with the gold ring with a seal? He is Matias (Reynaldo Gianecchini), an extremely wealthy person living in a house that is white everywhere with a perfect family. We hang out as he and his wife and their daughter Angela (Klara Castanho) are interviewed by a journalist, who throws softballs at him and fails at all to capture the spooky vibe of this sacred collection of tightly-wrapped people who pose like a chocolate-. 357 Magnum behaved.
Meanwhile, Veronica is spying on people looking for information on the mafia leader we know to be Matias, although she isn’t, and doing 1,000,000 abs. She shakes off an affiliated attorney, evades the cops she used to work for but unaware that she is the vigilante they are trying to nab, and reconnects with her former colleague Nelson (Silvio Guindane), who is so totally on her side. because he too has a secret bulletin board full of photos and maps and documents! They are soul mates! they have sex; she whales on a heavy bag; some heavy shit goes down like it always happens. And guess what? She finds out that Matias is the big culprit – and we learn that he’s some kind of fancy gilded religious evangelist and cult leader, just as she steps into the streaming tangle of his gloomy-eyed congregation.
What shows will it remind you of? This streak started like a by numbers CSI Clone complete with grim detectives grimly floating over grim corpses on slabs and all that. But it feels a lot Girl with the dragon tattoo now, crossed with the heavy cornball soap opera overtures of something like Sons of Anarchy.
Our opinion: I say this for Good morning Veronica – it moves fast. There’s no time to get bored when every other scene captivates you with highly dramatic plot advances, whether it’s deepening Veronica’s commitment to eliminating society’s most misogynistic imbeciles from the gene pool or teasing us with glimpses of the horrible things that go on in Matias’ perfect Virginity happens to White Manor (e.g. who is this clearly traumatized strawberry-blonde woman who lives with them?).
Reviewing the series pilot, I wrote that Veronica “was primed to be a conscientious, morally prudent heroine.” I’m stupid – she’s killing people now, and a little too casual, I might add. Meanwhile, the cops are clearly dumber without them, as their attempt to SWAT their vigilantes is about as subtle as a hippopotamus in a harem. “UP IN APARTMENT 52!” yells a cop as they jump out of the cars, sirens wailing, giving Veronica plenty of time to burn evidence, ring the fire alarm, pull a hoodie over her eyebrows, and head straight down the narrow stairwell to slip past them. Way to the cop, cops!
None of this is particularly plausible, but we should support Veronica’s efforts more than John Wick’s; they are less gory. It’s a little difficult to reconcile the series’ anti-violence message when its hero barely cracks a whip to put a bullet through someone’s brain, but once you get past that tripwire, it’s onto a slightly trashy one , pulpy type entertaining. As before, each episode ends with a PSA sharing resources for victims of abuse and violence, which almost comes across as an apology for all the violence that went before.
gender and skin: Some sweaty stylized sexy shenanigans, albeit with no bums or boobs; a naked woman with parts hidden.
farewell shot: Veronica simmers into the camera lens up close.
sleeping star: As the unwitting daughter of a wealthy and famously insidious general, Castanho has a serious arc opportunity here – she learns what is surely the terrifying truth about her parents that is only being hinted at here.
Most pilot line: Veronica’s vows: “I must finish what my father started.”
Our appeal: For its second season Good morning Veronica takes a few steps towards ridiculousness while maintaining its basic entertainment value. If you’ve seen the first season then STREAM IT because you’ll be pretty much compelled to see just how far Veronica goes in the revenge sweepstakes.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more about his work below johnserbaatlarge.com.