Season 2 of Criminal Code (Netflix) begins with an even bigger bang than the explosive jailbreak that ended Season 1. That’s because Isaac (Alex Nader), criminal mastermind of the Ghost Gang, was never caught, and four months later, federal officers Suellen (Maeve Jinkings) and Benício (Rômulo Braga) are trying to catch up to his latest audacious robbery. Criminal Code, created by Heitor Dhalia, Bernado Barcellos, and Leonardo Levis (Brotherhood), and based in part on true events, also stars Thomás Aquino, Daniel Blanco, Letícia Tomazella, and Pedro Caetano.
Opening Shot: Legions of São Paulo Futebol supporters are pouring through a stadium’s gates, banging drums and clad in green and white. Among them are federal police partners Suellen (Jinkings) and Benício (Braga).
The Gist: The cops are at the match to try and nab a SPFC fan/Ghost Ganger, with the idea he’ll lead them to Isaac (Nader), its elusive leader. But while Suellen and Benício grasp at low-level straws, and navigate pressure from their boss Rossi (Caetano) – “There’s a big target on the back of our agency,” he says, the classic cop show trope of higher-ups demanding results – Isaac himself is casually casing a large São Paulo bank. He’s not even worried about the cameras in there. For Isaac, the action has always been the juice, and this bank is his latest aggressive stretch. He escaped the feds’ clutches before. Why should he sweat about the heat now?
As Isaac tells his associates Gabriel (Blanco) and Djeison (Ever Enciso), the Ghost Gang’s next heist is even more elaborate than the Proguard robbery from Season 1 of Criminal Code. He has gamed out how to knock over the bank’s vault, how to gain surreptitious access to the facility, and how to escape. And if anybody’s got worries – Gabriel, for one, seems to have a few – Isaac has answers for those, too. “For every doubt,” he says, fingering a pile of plastic explosives, “I have a different plan.”
DNA evidence, and the blue-lit CSI-style labs where such evidence is processed on television, continues to be a valuable asset for the feds’ investigations. But Criminal Code also concentrates heavily on field work, and pretty soon Suellen and Benício are running a stakeout on Isaac’s crew. Rossi has also designated Suellen as team leader on the case, which puts her and her partner on point. (Brief scenes with their respective loved ones illustrate how little time either have to spend with them.) The fallout from Season 1 also continues with Isaac-adjacent criminal Soulless (Aquino) stewing in a Brazilian federal prison – for now. And as the early going of Code reveals more about Isaac’s latest operation, it also suggests he’ll have issues with management and dissent. There is a new heister working with the Ghosts, Xuxa (Matías Desiderio), and this guy’s the kind of crazy wild card who refers to himself in the third person. “Now…your boss is Xuxa.”
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Shows like Criminal Code seem to do very well for Netflix. The streamer touted big viewership numbers for its first season, and also features approximately five zillion international series with a similar look and feel, including Iron Reign (Spain) and Blood Coast (France). And over on Prime, you can follow the exploits of a charismatic, chaotic Brazilian criminal across three seasons of the series Dom.
Our Take: Watching the first season of Criminal Code, we gravitated to a few individual performances. We really liked how Maeve Jinkings balanced Suellen’s quiet professionalism with the lighter touches of sarcasm she displayed with Benício, her partner. And on the criming side, Alex Nader carried the rakish confidence of Isaac so well, we couldn’t help but believe he’d win the day, even if that meant the indiscriminate murder of many federal officers and blowing up a bunch of shit. Performances like these kept us engaged, even as the plot of Code stalled out and became too messy, often at the same time, and frequently settled things with firefights that were very hard to follow. So many guys with identical assault rifles and tactical gear and ski masks! It was so exhausting trying to keep tabs on who was who, the muddle almost felt purposeful.
Our hunch for Season 2 of Criminal Code? More of this same dynamic. Those performances are still dialed in, we like the addition of an unpredictable psycho in Xuxa – if you caught Season 2 of Gangs of London, he reminds us a lot of Koba (Waleed Zuaiter) – and the Ghost Gang might have beef with Soulless in addition to their evasion of the cops. So there are situations and individuals to root for inside this thing, on both sides of the legal ball. But on the whole, Criminal Code leans pretty heavily on the cops-and-crimers-and-gunplay-and-booms that fuel so many series like this.
Sex and Skin: As they might say in Brazil, às vezes.
Parting Shot: As the federal police continue their pursuit of Isaac, the master thief is finding out the hard way how difficult it is to get good heist help these days.
Sleeper Star: We don’t see much of brooding, intense Sem Alma (“Soulless”) as Season 2 of Criminal Code fires up. But Thomás Aquino’s performance was a highlight of its first season, and don’t worry – even though Soulless was apprehended, he will reemerge as a potential threat to Isaac and the Ghost Gang.
Most Pilot-y Line: As Isaac explains to one of his guys, their latest robbery will be even more giant than the already giant one from last season. “There is twice the cash that there was in Proguard. And here, because of my plan, we’ll split it between half as many guys.”
Our Call: Stream It. Criminal Code returns for Season 2 with greater stakes for federal police partners Suellen and Benício – professionally and personally – and puts more pressure on Ghost Gang honcho Isaac to validate his delusions of criminal grandeur.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
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