Alice Oscura, Featured Writer
Warning: Minor spoilers ahead
Plot: An Amsterdam gangster’s right-hand man named Ferry is sent to avenge the murder of his boss’s son after a robbery gone bad. However, Ferry ends up meeting the beautiful Danielle who threatens to derail his job.
Review: Netflix’s Ferry is a crime drama that is an origin story and prequel to Netflix’s Undercover series. The main protagonist is what we would call a “good bad guy”. Ferry, played by Dutch actor Frank Lammers, comes from your textbook broken family unit—abusive, drunk father and timid mother unable to defend herself or her children. Ferry ends up leaving home and finds himself in Amsterdam where he meets a gangster named Brink. Brink treats him like family but teaches him everything on the wrong side of the law. Ferry grows up to become Brink’s righthand man and henchman.
He overindulges in booze and drugs in addition to carrying out Brink’s violent orders. But when one of Brink’s businesses is robbed and his son ends up with a fatal injury, he dispatches his best hitman to dispense his own brand of revenge for his son’s murder.
The trail leads Ferry back to his hometown of Brabant where he learns some surprising news about the health of his sister Claudia (Monic Hendrickx) and meets the beautiful but flaky Danielle (Elise Schaap). At first he uses her connections in order to track down one of the culprits. But Danielle manages to charm Ferry with her quirkiness distracting him from the task at hand.
The story is quite engaging, funny and can be extremely violent in some scenes but of course it is to be expected whenever you are dealing with gangsters. Lammers has some particularly amusing facial expressions throughout the film, but I think that what adds humour to his character is the clumsy, lumbering way that he would go about handling certain things. If I were a naturally suspicious person, it would have been extremely easy to figure out that Ferry was asking way too many questions about this particular person and that something is obviously off with this guy.
But luckily, he makes a connection with Danielle who just goes about life living in her own little world. And eventually through a strange twist of fate, Ferry is forced to make a life-changing decision that would come back to haunt him and eventually spell the beginning of the end of his gangster life in Amsterdam.
Ferry’s pacing can be a bit uneven at times but not overly so. The main element is how captivating the main character is as he swings from being just another bad guy to a bad guy with a heart of gold. Lammers and Schaap also manage to make the oddest yet unexpectedly cutest onscreen couple by their excellent chemistry.
Even without the knowledge this film is meant to be a prequel Ferry can manage as a stand-alone movie. The promising and lighthearted conclusion does however manage to open the doorway for the audience to slide right into a binge watch session of the Undercover series to see what happens to future Ferry.
Sommer’s Score: 7 out of 10
You can check out more great crime drama content below:
Netflix’s ‘The Night Clerk’ is a Paint-by-Numbers Crime Drama Lifted by Unconventional Characters
The Crimes That Bind is a Choppy, Uneven Crime Drama
Dark Alice has an old soul and a curious mind. I believe that anyone can be a hero and that the good guys should always win! I dislike cruelty to animals and think that they have far superior qualities to humans. My motto is there is no future without the past. I also have a weird penchant for Paranormal TV shows even though the slightest sound makes me jump. I enjoy writing reviews and throwing in fun facts to pique the readers’ curiosity. My ultimate goal in life would be to become a published writer one day. Read More