Spoilers might need to cut and run.

I really, really liked the first part of the series. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy this second outing, I still love the series overall. However, I did start to see some oversights and loopholes in the whole heist planning. Some are done for dramatic license purposes and the others are based on pure opportunity. That being said, it is still a memorable and fun series if you don’t take it too seriously, of course.

(Credit: Netflix)

Lupin (2021) was created by George Kay and François Uzan for Netflix. Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is a very skillful thief who inspires his heists on the stories of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc. In this second part, Assane’s war with Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre) enters a more personal territory as everyone is compromised. His son Raoul (Etan Simon) is kidnapped and his ex-wife Claire (Ludivine Sagnier) is not above making a pact with the devil for his safe return.

But Assane does seem to remain every bit the gentleman thief he embodies. That doesn’t mean he’s not willing to involve Hubert’s daughter Juliette (Clotilde Hesme) whom he knows since childhood. However, he does keep his approach “mostly” honest. In the end it’s up to Juliette to help bring his father down. As risky as a maneuver as this is, it ends up working on his behalf.

This is perhaps the only weakness Assane’s plans have. A lot of its execution relies on chance. At some point while traversing corridors, he runs into three thugs that he manages to guide through an exit door to leave outside. At a different point, he runs into one inside a cluttered room and has to throw down. If by chance he was outnumbered in a small space, things would’ve gone differently. Basically, sometimes he’s lucky when he needs to be and as long as you’re able to accept that this is more about having fun, you’ll be good. Luck also means that sometimes he’s vulnerable when it doesn’t work, which means he is not invincible.

Highly recommended with perhaps one ounce of reservation. It’s still fun to watch Assane outrun and outsmart his opponents, but it does make it more satisfying when such a confrontation has been planned out in advance. Even then, sometimes it’s just nice to turn off your jaded brain and just enjoy him getting away even though the timing seems to be impossibly exact. Still worth a watch.

That will do for now.