Cynical Cinema

Paramount Home Entertainment has been coming out with some of the best new TV shows on DVD of late. Dexter, Californication, and many others. And now, on October 7th, they are bringing out another. Brotherhood is amazing. Sort of a Sopranos thing in that it involves mob bosses and contract killings and turf wars and that kind of thing. The main difference here is that the main characters are Irish instead of Italian. Which is fine, except after watching the first disc of Season Two, I started to talk with a bit of an Irish accent. And I started calling my parents “me ma” and “me da”. And my Irish accent is terrible. So my girlfriend got irritated.

After watching the second disc (the next four episodes), I developed a hankering for some Jameson’s Irish whiskey, and headed out to the liquor store. This might be the most effective product placement I have ever seen on TV. In every episode, there seems to be at least one character drinking Jameson’s. Sometimes it’s a cop who’s on duty. Sometimes it’s a hitman having breakfast. And sometimes it’s an old lady who just really needs to get drunk. But at every moment in the world of Brotherhood, someone somewhere is drinking Jameson’s. Thankfully, this got me buzzed for the last two episodes on the third disc, and I didn’t end up acting on my impulse to start killing people. And judging by how bad my Irish accent was, I can only assume I would have been pretty bad at killing people as well, and I would have ended up in prison, and I wouldn’t be here to write this review.

There is just so much going on in this show. There is a cop whose wife has left him, and he spirals downward on a path of self-destruction until finally he’s given but one way out. Inform on his family, or he’s finished. There’s Tommy, a politician whose ties to his own family are just about his only weakness in the political arena. And then there’s Michael, Tommy’s brother. He is the tough guy, bad-ass killer for hire, working for mob boss Freddy. Last season, Freddy attempted to eliminate Michael by having him beaten to death. Of course, Michael didn’t die, and he still doesn’t know that it was his boss that tried to kill him. Now he’s back at work, doing his job, killing folks, while working for the man who crushed in his skull. Because of the beating, Michael has suffered some brain damage, and is prone to blackouts and slightly erratic behaviour.

And then there are the supporting characters. A rich, powerful cast of terrific actors and beautiful women keep Season Two of Brotherhood moving along a a steady, measured, but incredibly compelling pace. Murder, romance, jealousy, whiskey and politics. One of the best shows on television.

Numb3rs is a show with a laudable premise. It attempts to educate people about the glorious, bad-ass side of math and physics while entertaining them and catching bad guys. You see, the cops have recruited a mathematical genius to help them solve their more difficult cases. Which, in the end, could really make for a cool show. But…we don’t get that. What we get is a pretty standard template for each episode. A crime is committed, and the cops are investigating. Which proceeds like a normal cop show, with regular filming and standard acting. Then the cops hit a snag, and the math guy happens to be walking by. He comes up with a way to solve the problem, mathematically. He explains this theory using some kind of analogy, and the camera starts jump-cutting, switches to black and white, and the soundtrack funks up. Like the math portion of this show is a music video, while the rest is CSI: Nerd. The math portion, it turns out, is either something obvious the cops should be doing anyway, or it’s a stretch on credibility that this mathematical solution could ever be applied to this problem.

The one episode in the Fourth Season that illustrates this best is one that has to do with street racing. To determine exactly what happened when a street racer crashes into a café and kills a man, the math guy turns to an engineer friend who happens to have the exact car-crash simulation software that can solve the case. Over the course of several music-video-edited montages, he discovers that someone else must have crashed into the car before it ran into the café. After many analogies and simulations, they determine what exactly happened, and then - it has nothing to do with the resolution of the episode. At all. It turns out the real question is “who murdered the street car racing driver”, and not “how did this happen”. In fact, the math stuff makes no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the show. But then, that’s fairly standard with this program. The mathematical “genius” moments are shoehorned in without really being essential to any episode.

Now, there are some good actors on this program, and the actual cop stuff is just about as good as any of the cop stuff on other similar programs. But the one thing that slows the show down is the one thing that is supposed to make it unique. And that’s too bad. Using an analogy to the behaviour of lions and jackals when discussing the behavious of humans who are being blackmailed doesn’t ring true. Then the mathematical model that will plug the name of the real killer into the equation strains credibility. Anyone who thinks they are learning something about math by watching Numb3rs is mistaken. I’m not even sure they will be entertained. Numb3rs, Season Four comes out on DVD Tuesday, September 30th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

There have been many little indie films that have done well with the theme of vigilante justice.  And some bigger-budget ones that haven’t done so well.  The main reason the big budget ones have done poorly (aside from the amazing Death Wish 4, which arms Charles Bronson with a rocket launcher at what appears to be a retirement home) is that they are merely jacked-up versions of the low-budget movies.  And the low-budget movies usually work because vigilante justice is something that is best served in grainy, gritty film-making.  The best of the bunch was Death Wish, which was the first of it’s kind and really changed the genre.  The next-best was Boondock Saints, which was incredibly stylish and managed to infuse Tarantino-esque cool, great lead performances, and some quality humour into a movie that changed the genre further.

Then there were the also-rans.  A ton of also-rans.  Death Wish 2, 3, and 5.  Hero Wanted, Death Sentence, and The Brave One.  And many, many more.  Outlaw fits somewhere in the middle, and at the same time it manages to change the genre once more.  A tight, gritty little film out of Britain, Outlaw is a film about five people who have, in one way or another, been the victims of violence.  As in every vigilante justice movie, the violence that finds these people is arbitrary, and goes completely unpunished.  The only way to get retribution is to go after those thugs that wronged them.  Also, as in every other successful vigilante movie, there is a cop who is helping them all out (Bob Hoskins). 

But that’s where the similarities end.  Because it is a group of people setting out to see justice done, and not just a lone gunman a la Charles Bronson, many different stories are told.  Sean Bean plays a soldier who has returned from Iraq to find his wife being unfaithful, and is unable to function in real society.  He meets a creepy weirdo security guard in his hotel, who sees all his guns and starts to idolize him.  This security guard has dreams of vigilantism, and recruits other people to join the cause.  Those people include a young man who has been beaten by a group of thugs because they thought he was gay, and another young man who has never been attacked but who lives in constant fear of the possibility.  And the last member of the team is a district attorney whose wife and unborn child have been killed as a warning for him to drop the case of a local gangster.  His story is tough to believe, that he would join this angry mob and completely turn his back on everything he believes, while still seemingly maintaining a rational mind. 

But that’s one of the things I like about this movie.  The characters, in a lot of ways, don’t make any sense.  Their motivations are clear, but their reasoning for going through with this gang violence thing is not.  Although Sean Bean is a military guy, an experienced soldier, we never get the sense that he is particularly good at it, and although he is the de-facto leader of this group because of his time in Iraq, he doesn’t really seem to have any real leadership skills, and he isn’t that impressive a fighter.  I like that because it’s realistic.  And I also like the other characters and their doubts and their sometimes half-assed participation in the project. 

That being said, for a movie that is more character-driven than action-oriented, there is not quite enough explanation for the actions of the individual characters.  I understand the initial anger and the desire for revenge.  But from there, I don’t quite know where these characters are going.  The two characters that make total sense to me are the soldier, who is doing this thing because he desperately needs something to do, and the psychopath who is doing this because he likes being involved in the violence.  But the others remain in a murky sort of quasi-morality that is never really resolved.  Hoskins, also, is an enigma, as the cop who helps them because he wants to see justice done, but who seems at other times not to care about his own job or catching criminals at all.

All in all, though, Outlaw is a solid, tight, gritty little indie movie that is unlike any other vigilante justice movie ever made.  And that’s a good thing.  It came out on DVD September 2nd, from Peace Arch Entertainment.

Alliance Films is releasing CSI: New York, season four, on September 23rd. And I actually believe that New York has evolved into the best of the CSI family. William Petersen as Gil Grissom on the Vegas version is vaguely creepy as the super smart father figure to the CSI team. David Caruso as Horatio Caine on the Miami version is fully creepy and completely ridiculous as the Jesus figure to the CSI team. Which means that Gary Sinise on CSI: New York, playing just a regular guy, is exactly what the whole CSI franchise needs.

The rest of the cast on CSI: New York is terrific as well. This is the best cast assembled for a CSI series, and the episodes are better as a result. Really, the plot and the writing of each CSI series is interchangeable with the other series, and so the cast really does make all the difference. Also, New York is just a more interesting city than Las Vegas, where most deaths are gambling related. And it is also more interesting than Miami, where most deaths are bikini related. Season Four is once again terrific, with guest stars like Bruce Dern and Dylan Bruce rounding out the excellent cast. Well worth picking up.

Alliance Films releases The Killing Gene today, September 16th. It’s a horror film in the tradition of Saw and Seven and other movies like them. A killer is stalking the lowlifes in the city, putting them in situations where they have to choose between ending their own life or the life of someone they love. A grizzled old police veteran (Stellan Skarsgard, Ronin) has been assigned to the case, one that brings back memories of an old crime that went unpunished. His new partner, Melissa George (Alias), starts to believe something is amiss. Of course, this is a movie that has been made several times before.

But rarely has it been done this well. The Killing Gene is relentless. And despite the fact that there is an over-reliance on coincidence and red herrings and easily-explained occurrences, there is barely any time to dwell on any of it. The final scene is intense and brutal. Once again, although the final “twist” is very obvious from the beginning. But The Killing Gene is so well-acted (by Skarsgard, George, and Selma Blair), and so well done that it holds you captivated until the very end. This is a horror film well worth picking up.

Alliance Films is releasing season six of CSI: Miami today, September 16th. There have been six seasons of this show, and all of them have been hilarious. Watching them on DVD is even funnier, because you don’t have all those commercials to dull your senses before the show begins again. And that really calls attention to the fact that this show can’t cut to a commercial without a deep, tough-guy line and a musical sting. When it comes back from commercial, there is a musical sting there as well. And often, another insightful, bad-ass line. Computers can’t analyze DNA or other evidence without a quick sting, a jump cut or two or five, and a flashy series of camera shots. This is just like the first version of CSI, only this time the priorities are flipped. The Vegas version is about crimes that happen to be investigated by hot people, whereas the Miami version is about hot people who just happen to investigate crimes. Usually crimes committed by hot people against other hot people. Which means more hot-chick montages.

Which means more style, less substance, and way more bikinis. I could write an episode of CSI: Miami in about eight minutes. Hot girl gets killed, all signs point to boyfriend with six-pack abs. David Caruso says something intense. Montage of bikinis and babes on the beach. The boyfriend is cleared, and now the signals appear to point in the direction of a secret cult of lesbian strippers who hold oil-wrestling parties. Caruso investigates. Lesbian strippers say sexy things to him, he delivers an intense line. Musical sting. A young child has witnessed something, but no one can get him to talk. But he’ll talk to Caruso, because he believes the man is Jesus. Caruso gets into a dustup with bad guys outside oil wrestling venue. He offers the bad guys a choice. Either throw down your guns or die. (Only more intense.) They choose not to throw down their guns, and he shoots them all. He officially changes his name to Big Daddy Kane. Musical montage of bikini chicks, hummers and guys with barbed-wire bicep tattoos. Caruso finds out the victim was his long-lost daughter. He shows no emotion. He discovers that the killer is in fact a hot chick in lingerie. He confronts her. She attempts to seduce him but he’s too cool. He shows no emotion. Guitar sting. Then there is a final shootout where a bunch of bad guys die, but the bad chick is merely knocked unconscious by a falling anvil. She is arrested. There is a musical montage of Caruso looking wistful in slow-motion as bikini-clad babes play on the beach and Ferraris zoom by.

This is essentially the plot of every episode in Season Six. Except that sometimes, instead of lesbian strippers, it’s hot swimmers in bathing suits or gorgeous lingerie models. And instead of the young child witness, sometimes it’s a deaf girl or a mentally handicapped man. Either way, they will talk only to Horatio. And in Season Six, instead of his long-lost daughter, we meet Caruso’s long-lost son. Either way, he shows no emotion. In fact, he remains extremely stony-faced while talking to this boy throughout the season, but of course the kid will come to love him anyway. Imagine you found your father, a man you never knew existed, after twenty years. And he was a stone gargoyle in shades. How long would it take you to warm up to him? An eternity? Ah, but not if he’s David Caruso…now, it’s all well and good to read my little plot synopsis up there, but if you want to actually SEE all those babes in bikinis and fancy fast cars, you’ll have to pick up Season Six of CSI: Miami on DVD tomorrow.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Criminal Minds: Season Three on DVD tomorrow, September 16th. As I have said many times before, most recently in my review of NCIS, these shows are a dime a dozen on TV. And I like almost all of them. Criminal Minds is one of the better ones, and the third season is my favourite to date. Nothing against Mandy Patinkin, who I like, but I am a big fan of Joe Mantegna. Both in the movies and on this show. This is the season where Patinkin left (although he does appear in the first episode), and Mantegna took his place. He adds a certain amount of credibility to the cast, which was already quite good. (Although I still find Thomas Gibson fairly irritating. Call it the curse of Dharma And Greg.)

This isn’t one of those series that delves deep into forensics, like CSI or NCIS. Instead, Criminal Minds deals with, well, criminal minds. Which stands to reason. It’s well-written, well acted, and the plot of each show is compelling. Which is especially true in the third season. Kidnapping, stalking, and murder. It’s worth checking out.

Saving Grace is a show on TNT in the States and on Showcase here in Canada. Season Two kicks off tonight, at 10 p.m. Eastern, and it’s solid. Holly Hunter stars in her first TV series as Grace, a hard-drinking, smoking, promiscuous detective in Oklahoma City. In the first season, she apparently has a string of one-night stands, an affair with her partner, and she kills a pedestrian in a hit-and-run with her Porsche. An angel appears to her and tells her she has a chance to do right again. I say “apparently” because I had not seen this show before. And I’m disappointed that I haven’t. Showcase specializes in the type of shows that you don’t normally see, with flawed characters, dark humour and creepy situations. And Saving Grace certainly qualifies.

I got a chance to see the first episode of season two today, and this really is a remarkable show. In the season opener, Grace has managed to capture and kidnap the priest who molested her as a child. While she is keeping him a prisoner in her house, she manages to kill a man who was on the FBI’s most wanted list. The internal affairs department begins an investigation after that shooting, because it gets reported that she was drunk at the time. It’s a powerful, dark and troubling episode to begin season two of a series that is better than most. Check it out tonight.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season Five of NCIS on DVD Tuesday August 26th. NCIS stands for Naval Crime Investigative Service, but not once do they investigate anything that has to do with a belly-button. Oh, geez. I think I hurt my own brain with that cheesy joke. Sorry to subject you to such chicanery, I am simply trying to come to terms with NCIS. I want to describe this series using words other than “generic”, or “common” or “meh”. But nothing is springing to mind. In season five, they DO kill off a major character, which IS pretty new and cool.

But in the end, this show is still really…meh. There is a hot young guy who cracks jokes and does cool-guy stuff. Think Nick on CSI. There is a nerdy never-leaves-the-house scientist guy. Think David on CSI. There is a wise, older man overseeing the whole process. Think Grissom on CSI. There is a hot young woman who seems to place logic ahead of emotion. Think Sarah from CSI. And there is an older woman in charge, played by a formerly hot actress who is still very hot. Played by Lauren Holly in NCIS, or Marg Helgenberger on CSI. But it isn’t just CSI. I have seen these characters in Bones, and in NYPD Blue, and in Homicide. Also in JAG. NCIS is a spin-off of JAG.

The most obnoxious character is one I have seen in dozens of other shows as well. The airheaded moron chick who also happens to be a brilliant scientist. I can understand Abby not knowing the difference between a mocacchino and a latte. Or the difference between medium-rare and well done, or who won the World Series. But a brilliant scientist can’t possibly be this dumb in the rest of her life. Airheaded is one thing, but this woman should be dead. She is apparently too stupid to feed herself in her own home. And yet she can break down DNA in brilliant ways to discover the identities of killers and match voice prints to cell phones and all kinds of smart-girl stuff. But we’re basically meant to believe she’s never learned to tie her shoes, tell time, or read. Come on!

I don’t want to rag on NCIS too much though. But that’s pretty much exactly what I’m doing, isn’t it? By all rights, I should absolutely hate this show. It should really have been called NCSI, Neo-CSI. It is so generic, so obvious, and so…meh! But I do kind of like it. I like it because I like this stuff. The scientific police procedurals. There are some I can’t watch. Like, David Caruso is so obnoxious that I can’t bring myself to watch CSI: Miami. And simply because there are no characters that obnoxious, I can enjoy an episode or two of NCIS, sometimes in a row. It’s basically a show only for people who like this kind of show. And there must be a lot of people who like this kind of thing. Because almost all of these shows are still on the air. No matter how generic they may be.

Only four of the sixteen episodes on The Untouchables: Season Two Volume Two actually deal with Al Capone and bootlegging in any way, but the series is still top-notch. Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season Two, Volume Two on Tuesday, August 26th, and it remains one of the coolest, most watchable old shows available on DVD. Robert Stack as Elliott Ness is as cool as ever, and the staccato delivery of the narrator gives the show a documentary-style 1950s feel. Dated, but still really cool. Adding to the cool factor is Telly Savales, who co-stars in the episode titled “The Antidote”.

Mobsters, G-Men, bulletproof cars, guns, drugs, booze, showgirls and crooked politicians. The Untouchables is one of the greatest examples of television film noir in history. The one complaint I still have about the series is that Elliott Ness is the hero, and Al Capone is the obvious nemesis, but the series deals with Capone only occasionally. Capone is played by Neville Brand, and he is so magnetic that I just want to see more of him. There are so many episodes about different bootleggers and mobsters and gangsters, that it seems as though they might as well have made those about Capone, instead of a new nameless bad guy each time. The Untouchables is still one of the best classic shows available on DVD, and Season Two, Volume Two is available today.