Created and written by The Revenant co-writer Mark L. Smith alongside daughter Elle Smith, Netflix’s six-part Western miniseries teases a much more captivating whodunit mystery than it ultimately delivers. In Untamed, Eric Bana and Sam Neill spearhead a strong cast that’s let down by disinterested storytelling and an uninspired plot evocative of many, better shows and films. While Untamed is wan and plodding, however, it does nothing to diminish Bana’s appeal as a leading man. The simple hook of watching the Chopper and Munich actor solving a murder in the American West might be enough to elicit strong viewership on Netflix, but the actor deserves a much more compelling, inventive vehicle than this.
What Is ‘Untamed’ About?
Untamed peaks early in its visually striking, clever cold open. Climbers on the face of El Capitan are nearly killed when the body of a young woman (Ezra Franky) falls from the top, though it’s never really a question for the viewer if this was just an accident, one of many missed opportunities for much-needed tension. National Parks Service special agent Kyle Turner (Bana) is called to the scene, and the grizzled detective opens a case alongside Yosemite’s chief park ranger, Paul Souter (Neill), an old friend. The two men have a long-formed bond over decades of family baggage, some of it intertwining.
At the end of the first episode, it’s revealed that Turner and his estranged ex-wife, Jill (Rosemarie DeWitt), have been grieving their young son for years, mostly separately. Turner also teams up with a young ranger recruit, a former LA cop named Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago), in an attempt to piece together the gruesome mystery.
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Netflix’s ‘Untamed’ Is a Derivative Whodunit
Untamed stars performers who’ve done great work for years, if not decades (notably its headlining veterans), so it’s surprising and disappointing in equal measure to announce that the show is such a muted and limp affair that none of the characters or performances really ultimately amount to much. Throughout a film career that spans nearly 30 years, Bana has often been better than the material he’s working with (like the time he delivered the most fully-formed performance in Troy by far, or his underappreciated psychological approach to Bruce Banner in the messy Hulk), but it’s still a letdown to see such an admirable actor given little to do. A man grappling with a brutal murder and his own haunted past sounds much more compelling than it plays out in Untamed. The show’s pacing is uneven and anticlimactic, lacking suspense or impetus in examining characters who are solemn and downbeat without much depth or intrigue.
Similarly, DeWitt had much more to work with (and was far more dynamic) as a complicated stage mom in last fall’s surprisingly satisfying horror sequel Smile 2. Santiago’s performance perhaps brings the most spark to the stodgy proceedings. It’s a credit to the actor that the detective’s sidekick, often a thankless archetypal part in such fare, feels like a real person, even though the B-plot concerning Naya’s abuse-ridden past, along with her young son (Omi Fitzpatrick-Gonzales), feels clunkily separate from the central procedural.
The unveiling that one character is bad news is simply one of the more obvious reveals in whodunit memory, but worse than being predictable, it just isn’t an exciting or compelling final act. There’s one tangentially related plot twist near the end, a dark and vengeful secret shared by Kyle and Jill, that genuinely elicits some surprise, but that’s one of the few moments the show feels alive, or in any way original.
Many will understandably expect Untamed to be, at the very least, a visually stunning exploration of Sierra Nevada’s natural beauty. Sadly, Untamed doesn’t really deliver in this department in the way an audience would be perfectly in line to hope for. The production was largely shot in Canada, in fact, but all the same, there’s very little visual splendor to evoke Yosemite on display. Some may compare its subject matter and procedural format to True Detective, but Untamed isn’t expressive enough to be called a noir. The title ends up being rather ironic, or at the very least wildly out of place. This series doesn’t feel unexplored in the slightest; viewers have been here before.
Untamed is now available to stream on Netflix.
Untamed
Despite solid efforts from Eric Bana and Sam Neill, Netflix’s Untamed is an underwhelming miniseries.
- Release Date
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July 17, 2025
- Network
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Netflix
Pros & Cons
- Eric Bana and Sam Neill do what they can with a thin script.
- Untamed is a formulaic whodunit that never comes to life.
- The iconic setting isn’t really explored narratively or visually in the ways that it could have been.
- The reveal of the killer is predictable.
