Commentary: ‘Splinter Cell: Deathwatch’ Works Best When It Remembers It’s ‘Splinter Cell’
by Frank Martin
Adapting a narrative television show or movie from a video game can be difficult, as evident by so many of them becoming failures. But with video games more popular than ever, the trend of adapting them to the large or small screen will continue. These adaptations often falter when trying to find the right balance between the gameplay that made the game so successful and writing a worthwhile story that fills the rest of the screen time. Splinter Cell: Deathwatch succeeds when it does exactly what the Splinter Cell games are known for. When it starts to veer off that path into an original story, the audience is left wondering when it will go back to doing what the game series knows best.
The program starts with a splinter cell agent infiltrating an enemy stronghold. Except it isn’t Sam Fisher (Liv Schreiber), the legendary agent who’s been the star of the games. It’s a female agent named Zinnia (Kirby). She uncovers her partner’s body, who had been tortured and murdered. When Fourth Echelon, the spy service that employs the Splinter Cells, loses contact with her, they tap Sam Fisher to find her. He comes out of retirement and locates Zinnia while tying up loose ends from his past.
While the vast majority of the games featured under the Tom Clancy brand were about warfare, Splinter Cell was all about stealth and infiltration. In many ways, it was really about avoiding fights rather than getting into them … even if fighting was unavoidable at times and Sam Fisher was extremely proficient in eliminating the enemy. When the Netflix show veers into this territory, it’s like seeing the Splinter Cell games come to life. It does a great job showcasing Sam’s stealth abilities and how he reacts on the fly in extremely stressful situations. Of course, the entire show can’t be scenes like this, so there is a story that serves as a backdrop to the action. Nevertheless, the show excels when the story takes a backseat and the action takes over.
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch is now streaming on Netflix.