Streaming columnist NICK OVERALL reviews Chris Pratt’s new role as a US Navy Seal and finds the going a bit glum. 

AMAZON Prime’s shiny new military blockbuster “The Terminal List” recruits Chris Pratt for an uncharacteristically frowny mission.

Here the beloved actor isn’t playing a guardian of the galaxy, nor a motorbike-riding dinosaur trainer. He’s instead Lieutenant Commander James Reece, a Navy Seal haunted by the loss of his platoon that was fatally ambushed during a covert operation. 

After a tense flashback to the doomed mission, we join the action years later as Reece goes on a dangerous investigation to find out why he lost his team – a hunt for answers that he may regret looking for.

General audiences have been loving it, critics are turning their noses up.

Why? Unlike other television shows clamouring for political messages to stand out among the hundreds being produced in the streaming wars, “The Terminal List” doesn’t really have anything provocative to say.

It feels like a television show of yesteryear, an American military fantasy that would have been universally lauded if ensconced in the mid-2000s but amongst today’s ever more impressive catalogue of TV shows struggles to establish a clear identity.

Not that the show really seems to care.

“The Terminal List” is unashamedly an action blockbuster product from one of the world’s richest companies. With Amazon’s money at its disposal, the production value of its action scenes is without a doubt impressive.

Fans of “Jack Reacher”, “Jack Ryan”, Tom Clancy or anyone else of the macho military ilk will likely get a thrill out of it, especially as the actors underwent some real Navy Seal training to prep for filming.

Everything apart from the shootouts is just so drearily dour though. Pratt commits to the role of the tortured Navy Seal, but that doesn’t extend far beyond him just looking glum for the camera.

There’s even an obnoxiously dark filter placed over every scene to really sell the gritty vibe, a cheap attempt to instil some visual style.

If the show isn’t going to bother to try to say anything deeper, it may as well lighten things up at least a little. It’s not like it hasn’t got only one of the most endearing actors working today in the lead role to help.

FOR many a modern audience member, the 1981 West-German World War II film “Das Boot” might at first glance seem a bit too dated to warrant a watch.

Simply titled “The Boat” in English, this claustrophobic tale about a German submarine in the Battle of the Atlantic is considered as one of the greatest war films ever made.

Its central question is fascinating. What happens when a group of ordinary men, who only wish to do the best for their comrades and country, are confined to a ship beneath a war-torn ocean?

While much of the war-film canon worships our own side, “Das Boot” marked a remarkable feat of both humanising the German forces and breaking into the English-speaking mainstream.

Forty years later, a new television series streaming on SBS On Demand is trying to bring the story to a new generation.

Now streaming its third season, “Das Boot”, named exactly like the original, is a sequel set nine months after the film’s devastating ending with German star Tom Wlaschiha taking on top billing.

For some viewers Wlaschiha will be looking familiar thanks to his recent addition to the cast of the Netflix phenomenon “Stranger Things”, a role that will launch him into a flurry of new-found fame.

It’s a worthy ambition to wish to expand the audience of “Das Boot”. Porting things into a longer series means it loses that thrillingly taut pace of the original, but the trade-off is getting to dive deeper into its intriguing roster of characters. Those interested can also find the original film on SBS On Demand.

In terms of modern military series, something like “Das Boot” could not come in greater contrast to “The Terminal List”. It doesn’t have the big budget pizzazz of Amazon’s offer, but it might just be more worth your time anyway.