Cinemonkey

A Head for Crime [Headhunters]

 

 

 

Fashions in detective Fiction seem to go in waves. There was the long Agatha Christie polite mystery, followed by the overlapping hardboiled school. In recent years there has been the “novelty” detective (dwarf, blind, Russian cop), followed by the grim realism of James Ellroy and Don Winslow, among others, which is the current standard.

In the past 10 years, though, the Scandinavian thriller has come to the fore. The First Scandinavian mysteries popular in English were the 10 “Martin Beck” police procedurals by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, many turned into American adaptations and also a series of homegrown TV shows. The Danish TV series Forbrydelsen is one of the best shows on any television ever, and has been turned into the slow paced American knock off, The Killing. In 1992, Danish author Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (Smilla’s Sense of Snow) was an international best seller (and a dull movie), and while in recent years, the obvious leader is the Dragon Tattoo series, which also drew attention to the work of Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indriðason, Ann Holt, and numerous others in what is being called Scandinavian noir or when they come to the movies what I like to call film glacée.

 

Scandinavian noir films, such as Insomnia, are notable for usually being procedurals, often with political or social cause backdrops, a wide range of social strata examined (like the hardboiled school), and with troubled or disturbed main characters out of Dostoevsky. As with the Martin Beck books, they offer internal critiques of the “Socialist dream states” of the north, especially the bureaucracy and myopia, and the women have none of the Christian inhibitions of the U. S. or England when it comes to nudity, sexuality, multiple partners, and even crime. The latest recipient of readership loyalty is the Norwegian Jo Nesbø. Yellow Bird, the same company that adapted the Dragon Tattoo novels, has made a film of one of his stand alone novels, Headhunters, though most of his books feature the series character Harry Hole.

 

 

Taking a page from Patricia Highsmith, Headhunters tells of a successful businessman, the unusually named Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie, who has the cadaverous look of Steve Buscemi), who has a sideline in art theft, if only to keep his beautiful wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund, who, like Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut, is introduced in all her coltish beauty in a bathroom) in the finery he thinks she demands. Brown is rather on the short and gargoyleïsh side, at least in his view, and he needs all the edge he can to keep his wife interested – when in fact, all she wants is a child. In daily life, Brown is a recruitment executive, a headhunter for major corporations. At his wife’s art gallery, Brown meets one Clas Greve (TV’s Nikolaj Coster- Waldau, from Game of Thrones), who strikes Brown as a likely candidate for a computer company in search of a CEO. Greve seems even more attractive when Brown learns that the man inherited a rare Reubens from a relative. Little does Brown know, at first, that Greve is also a “headhunter” – hence the plural title.

 

More should not be said of this tale that relies on turnabouts and revelations as Brown slips from one predicament to another.[1] The director is Morten Tyldum who is working from a script by frequent collaborator Lars Gudmestad, and the film seems to be loyal to the text. As with other Yellow Bird films, the technical credits are high, but unlike the second two Dragon movies, the pace is lively, with the characters continually rooted in realistic elements, despite the usually heightened events of a thriller. The film in fact requires careful attention to its meticulous structuring. Few causal remarks, such as someone saying that they have a fear of dogs, are needlessly placed, and the theme of “heads” and “hunting” are a common theme, fully woven into the film’s texture.

 

Still, Headhunters isn’t probably the best introduction to Scandinavian noir. It’s more of an Elmore Leonard type tale than an examination of northern social problems and congenitally unhappy people – though in one sequence Roger comes home to find Diana watching The Girl Who Played with Fire on TV. Apparently, like the Dragon movies before it, Nesbø’s novel is to be turned into an American movie at some point, so the subtitle-reading-averse will still be able to get the story.

 

1 Though I will add that Headhunters becomes the fourth of only four films I can think of in which a character is submerged in human feces. The others are Seven Beauties, The Shawshank Redemption, and Schindler’s List. Interestingly the other three are all prison films, and two of them are set in concentration camps.

Posted at All Classical on April 28, 2012 by D. K. Holm

CSI on Star Trek

Friday May 7: Star Trek ... Next Day Air Hip hop tale of two thieves who are accidental recipients of a cocaine cache. Friday May 15: Angels and Demons ... Management Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn star in this comedy about unlikely love between a slacker and a high powered professional. Shot in Oregon ... Still Green Yet another tale of high schoolers staging one last blast before hitting college. Friday May 22: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Security guard Ben Stiller must sneak into the national museum in order to rescue two of his museum's ghostly residents, shipped there accidentally ... The Girlfriend Experience Steven Soderbergh's new movie is more Bubble than Oceans's 11 as it examines the life and commerce of a high class call girl in New York ... Dance Flick The latest parody of recent films and genres from the Wayans Brothers ... Friday May 29: Drag Me to Hell Stephen King-like tale of a loan officer given a curse by an aged lady she declines. Sam Raimi directs and co-writes... Up Disney animated comedy about a aged balloonitic taken an airborn trip to South America... The Brothers Bloom Two con men ( Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo) attempt to fleece a rich girl (Rachel Weisz ) in this crime comedy from Rian Johnson (Brick).

 

 

A recent episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation posed a satiric homage to Star Trek and its fans. In it, two of the heretofore minor characters, lab rat Hodges (Wallace Langham), who is so minor that chief cop Jim Brass doesn't know who he is when he calls from a crime scene, and biochemist Wendy Simms (Liz Vassey), accidentally meet, and stumble upon a crime scene, at a convention for a show called Astro Quest. There a producer is murdered for taking the long-cancelled Astro Quest and updating it into a messy, dirty, violent Battlestar Galactica-style TV show of despair and pain, to the ire of good old “Questers” (and look for BSG's co-creator along with star Grace Park among the outraged fans; in addition BSG scribe David Weddle co-wrote the episode).

In this in-joke littered episode, Hodges fantasizes being the Captain Kirk equivalent and eyeing Simms in various costumes and settings. By the end, Simms has started equally fantasizing, and after the loving parody the show makes the point that Star Trek and shows and movies like it provided a propitious funnel of feelings for otherwise frustrated people of all stripes. nerd or normal. Trekkers may be the original Incels.

The homage was perfectly timed, as J. J. Abrams reconstitution of the Paramount franchise is set to open on May 5. The new rendition raises once again the mystery over why Star Trek has had such a hold over a generation of viewers. The show wasn't all that popular when it aired originally for three seasons in the mid-'60s, and NBC cancelled it in June 1969. Its life continued in syndicated reruns and an animated version, and eventually the executives at Paramount realized that there might be something in the franchise, especially after the rise of Trek conventions and a letter writing campaign by fans. That resulted in, among other things, a feature film reuniting the show's cast, a tepid stodgy affair directed by Robert Wise in 1979, which made it clear that the old codgers at the studio still didn't understand what they had. Eventually, though, perhaps thanks to the popularity of Star Wars, other movies and new TV series re-captivated the next generation of audiences.

What did those original viewers like about the show? Was a love of camp the motivation, or was it sci-fi nerd kids who had dreamed of having their interests finally represented on TV rejoicing in even a pallid reflection of their desires? The sets were cheesy and the acting bombastic, and like science fiction of the '50s and '60s each episode was really a social protest moral statement about matters of the time such as over population and nuclear escalation. The multi-ethnic cast promoted a form of easy liberal universalism.

J. J. Abrams has become something of a franchise savior. Though his own program Alias had a cult it struggled, but his vision for Lost took off when he was commissioned to take it over. He went on to reify Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible series, and now turns his guns on Star Trek, which, like other recent sequels such as the James Bond series, goes back to the beginning and starts over. The film has all the familiar names, but in larval form and with new faces: James T. Kirk (teen movie star Chris Pine), Spock (TV's Zachary Quinto), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (British comedian Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin). Winona Ryder also stars, and the bombastic villain is an unrecognizable Eric Bana as the destructive Nero.

Expect the movie to include typical Abrams narrative touches such a fixation on parental figures and romances rife with secrets. Abrams, a stated non-Trek fan, will probably not include in-jokes or homages to the original show. The emphasis will be on action and suspense, "facing your fears" Baywatch-style psychology, and less on ideas and social protest. But will Abrams show the kind of affection that the CSI episode unveiled? Probably not. It will be interesting to see what hardcore Trek fans make of the exercise.

And speaking of cults such as Star Trek, one of the most interesting and the most long lived is the affection for the icy, imperious Sherlock Holmes. The character is so beloved that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 60-some stories with the consulting detective weren't enough and over the last 100 years writers who felt they could do just as good a job have created pastiches with similarly named sleuths or with Holmes and Watson themselves once again at center stage. One of the most clever pastiches, however, is David Pirie's approach. The British novelist and horror film historian went back to the roots of the character and created a series based on Doyle himself, and his Watson-like apprenticeship to Dr. Joseph Bell, the real life model for Holmes.

In a series of novels, and in two TV movies based on them, Pirie explored the foundation of the Holmes myth in the real life circumstances of Doyle's life. Now two of the films are out on DVD, with the late Ian Richardson (who played Sherlock Holmes in two TV adaptations in the 1980s) as Dr. Joseph Bell and Robin Laing as the young Scottish medical student Doyle.

Murder Rooms imagines how Doyle met Bell and became his fascinated acolyte as Bell makes himself available to the local constabulary as a consultant on difficult cases. One episode gives some background on a difficult case that confounds both men and leads to romantic disillusionment on Doyle's part and a first interest in spiritualism.

It's clear what attracts readers and viewers to Holmes. It's familiar. It was cozily familiar back in the late 1800s when the stories first began to appear, and remained familiar through renditions by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett and countless others.

Originally published in the Vancouver Voice April 2009.

They Spy

Possibly the last of the "gimmick" detective stories for the time being, Person of Interest falls in the tradition of crime shows failed (Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Raines) and successful (Monk, Psych) in which there is an odd detective paired with someone who is grounded in some form of reality. In this case it is Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson) and Mr. Reese (Jim Caviezel). A variation on Rex Stout's inert Nero Wolfe and and his proxy man-of-action Archie Goodwin, Mr. Finch is the brain and Mr. Reese the brawn. We learn that Mr. Finch once designed an elaborate computer set up that tracks potential terrorists. Though this "minority report" approach to crime passes without much comment, Mr. Finch realizes that his program can also anticipate ordinary crimes-to-be. Since the government that hired him isn't so much interested in ordinary street crime, Mr. Finch has enlisted the aid of Mr. Reese to hit the pavement and spy on these ordinary citizens and stop crime. The only hitch is that Mr. Finch isn't sure if the names spat out by the computer designate the victim or the perpetrator of a crime.

 

 

After three episodes, the subjects of their scrutiny have proven to be a bad guy, a good guy, and someone in between. The series has also established that there are murky moments from the main duo's pasts that will receive slow revelation, if the series lasts the next seven weeks. Mr. Reese has a back story of guilt and repression; Mr. Finch has certain disabilities that haven't been explained, impediments absent when he is shown in flashback.

Person of Interest is the brain child of Jonathan Nolan, who wrote his brother Christopher's film Memento. Both share an interest in surveillance. Christopher's first film was the little-seen feature Following, about a writer who follows random people on the street only to be ensnared in a criminal enterprise, but it might as well have been written by Jonathan, who contributed to some of his brother's other films, most of them concerned with spying and the dominance of one person over another. But unlike The Dark Knight Returns, this TV series thus far hasn't raised any ethical issues about the nature of surveillance, especially as conducted by a private citizen in odd circumstances.

Jim Caviezel is surprisingly effective as a Equalizer type guy, and Michael Emerson brings some of his mysterious Ben Linus-Lost mojo to this equally peculiar role. As per action figures on the small screen Mr. Caviezel never smiles and in fact never really moves his face much at all. It is a death mask, with the death erupting in his foes. For Mr. Finch, Mr. Emerson's unusual line delivery and sense of anguished concern as a shield against ungainly emotion comports well with the character. 

What Person of Interest has going for it most so far is beautiful urban photography byTeodoro Maniaci. Otherwise it hasn't worked out some of its kinks yet and is only beginning to explore the backgrounds of its two central characters. Aside from that, the procedural crime stories that form the bulk of each episode are conventional tales with some small twists that keep the viewer off guard. What's most interesting is how the show is of a piece with the Nolans' work on the big screen.

Note as of Tuesday, 16 January, 2012: Person improved greatly with time, broke out of a repetitive funk by starting to lighten up on Reese's bad cop ally and started to incorporate a police detective dogging their trail. Episodes before the late holiday break were highly effective and got back into action last week with sure footed effects.

TV: A New All-Movie Network

I wanted to bring readers' attention to a new broadcast channel I've stumbled upon. It's called This, or ThisTV, and I have no idea where the channel calls home or who is involved in creating it. I do notice that the promoters love puns on the word "this." A typical self-promotional spot will include, "This is very cool," and other puns, so that at times you feel trapped in an Abbott and Costello routine. But the programers make interesting choices within their limited means.

I came upon the channel two or three weeks ago on a weekend when I converted my iMac into a television via EyeTV, which to my surprise receives the new digital feed. In any case, in my town, Portland, Oregon, the digital end of the spectrum sends out two local NBC affiliates (though one is a weather channel), four PBS feeds (though one is the local radio station's audio over a slide show of seven numbingly rotated Oregon landscape pix), and about eight religious channels. ThisTV, the channel, is broadcast as the secondary feed of the ABC affiliate, and it must have gone on air the same day I activated my new set up. It seems new.

A possible website was not live the last time I looked so there's no info there, but I did find "this" programing guide. What I did glean from dropping in on the station over a few weeks was that the station appears to own a huge package of MGM-Orion-UA movies and TV shows. Within these limitations, the programers do some interesting things. For example, Cotton Comes to Harlem was followed by Across 110th Street, as if Quentin Tarantino were in the booth. The Poitier drama Pressure Point was followed by the racially-themed noir Odds Against Tomorrow. Alice's Restaurant was followed by Hair. One Saturday This offered three beach party movies in a row (well, the third was a ski party movie, but it did have Frankie Avalon in it, with a cameo by James Brown trying to dance in a space the size of a bungalow's foyer). Another Saturday was a westerns day, so the schedule included Support Your Local Sherif, Hawks's Red River, Man with the Gun (with Robert Mitchum, music by Alex North), Sam Whiskey, and The Scalphunters. The next day was war movies day. This has also shown two Ossie Davis movies in a row and two William Schallert films on the same day, no doubt unintentional mini-festivals.

Late one night, when I woke up with a touch of insomnia, the channel was airing the old The Outer Limits (which is why I think the channel is brand new ... the first episode that aired was the first in the series), Mr. Ed, and The Patti Duke Show, followed by early morning broadcasts of some shrill old '70s or '80s cartoon shows like the Paddington Bears.

This all may sound good but a problem with the station is that there are lots and lots and lots of commercial breaks with a limited, repetition-injury-enducing number of ads and PSAs. Worse, the movies are truncated, panned and scanned, and censored. And they show the same movies over and over again. I also have a feeling that though some of the movies aired are good, the programmers think they are all bad, as if they are dealing with a pile of junk only the unemployed and meth addicts would watch. Partially, the programers are right about their product. I've sat through some truly bad films on This: a third rate gumball rally film called Safari 3000 with David Caradine, Stockard Channing, and Christopher Lee; a bad Australian "thriller" with Sam Elliott as a private eye; a blonde-dyed Michael Madsen at his mannered worst in an incoherent drive-in type movie called Dead Connection; and a somnambulistic Burt Reynolds in Malone (there are a lot of Burt Reynolds movies on This).

Those of us without cable or satellite are the lowest of the low as far as broadcasters are concerned. Our movies are bleeped and laden with advertising. And what advertising! This, like the local Fox affiliate during the day, offers up endless ads for gouging technical schools, storage devices, and health treatments, commercials that are all loud and frequent. This is not the ideal way to view old movies, especially if there is a video store just down the street. However, if you only have television from the air and don't mind having truncated movies selected for you in sometimes interesting combinations, This is adequate as a free version of AMC.

[This text originally appeared in a slightly different form as a posting on the Mobius Home Video Forum. Kenneth Warner wrote in to say that, "MGM co-owns ThisTV, actually, with Weigel (which owns a number of indy stations in the Midwest)."]

Recuillement: Adventures in Paradise

Most people probably came to James A. Michener from his massive, exhausting books, or through the musical South Pacific. But as a child of the '50s my introduction to his oeuvre came via television.

Oh, to be in the living room once again with all the family when at 9 pm of a Sunday night, ABC slipped into a dream state and Adventures in Paradise began. Though the series lasted only three seasons, it made an impression on all who saw it, for the show carried the viewer out of the humdrum workaday world and into exotic locales.

AiP is one of my first television memories My parents watched it faithfully, and I can still remember, as a young lad, being fascinated with the palm trees, the high seas, and the Polynesian women whom the show's hero, Captain Adam Troy, invariably encountered. The theme song is still with me to this day.

Adventures in Paradise is based on a concept by Michener, but derived from the same military experiences that also formed the basis for the musical. In fact, AiP creates something of a line of demarcation for Michener's works. Michener's earlier novels are fresher, born of actual experience and observed reality, so much different from later "encyclopedic" Michener. Though admirable, his massive later fictions are born of research rather than observation.

The premise of the series was simplicity itself. Adam Troy (the cosmically beautiful McKay) was an American Korean War veteran who stayed on in the Pacific after the war. As freelance captain of the schooner "Tiki", Troy drifted from adventure to adventure while carrying passengers and cargo anywhere from Hong Kong to Pitcairn Island. His original partner was Chinese-American Oliver Lee, and he was assisted by first mates Clay Baker and later Chris Parker.

The late Gardner McKay was the son of Deane McKay, an ad executive, and Catherine. He was raised in New York and Paris. He attended Cornell University two years, but left when his father died. He worked in advertising for six months but found that he could not stand it. At age 20, he became a

sculptor and had a piece displayed in the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959, he was spotted by a Hollywood producer who convinced him to audition for Adventures in Paradise. When the series was cancelled after three seasons, McKay decided he really did not like the celebrity spotlight and, like his character, proceeded to roam the world. He hiked in the Amazon, rode camels in Egypt, and crewed on Caribbean yachts. Finally, in 1980 he met Madeleine Madigan, who became his wife.

The artistic power of Michener is infectious. Once the life long bachelor had settled down he decided to become a writer. He wrote a suspense novel, called Toyer, and was the drama critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner from 1979 to 1981. Like Richard Chamberlain, Raymond Burr, and Jack Lord, he retired to Hawaii, where he died in 2001.

His real legacy, of course, will remain Adam Troy. But who can forget the many guest stars who graced the show! From Joan Blondell in the series's first episode, "The Forbidden Sea" in September 1959 to Ray Walston in "A Bride for the Captain, " in 1961, a cavalcade of stars graced the series. Also on hand were Ricardo Montalban in "The Derelict," Carroll O'Connor in "Hong Kong Island," Teresa Wright in "The Pit of Silence, Lon Chaney Jr. and Kurt Kasznar in "The Black Pearl," Gladys Cooper in "Paradise Lost," Simon Oakland, Suzanne Pleshette, Anna May Wong, and Paulette Goddard in "The Lady From South Chicago," Julie London in "Mission to Manila," Eva Gabor in "Peril at Pitcairn," Kim Hunter and Elaine Stritch in "Haunted," Albert Salmi and Alexis Smith in "Somewhere South of Suva," Viveca Lindfors in "Castaways," Brando's wife Anna Kashfi in "The Archer's Ring," Martin Landau and Herbert Marshall in "Nightmare on Napuka," Lawrence Tierney in "Walk Through the Night," Dan Duryea and Gloria Vanderbilt in "Judith," Vincent Price in "The Color of Venom," Yvonne de Carlo in "Isle of Eden," Fay Bainter in "Prisoner in Paradise," Alf Kjellin and Herbert Marshall in "There Is an Island," Claude Akins in "The Amazon," Gena Rowlands in "The Death-Divers," Julie Newmar in "Open for Diving," William Shatner in "Once Around the Circuit," Agnes Moorehead in "The Krishmen," Barbara Steele in "Daughter of Illusion," Inger Stevens in "Angel of Death," Hans Conreid in "The Jonah Stone," Cecil Kellaway and Jessie Royce Landis in "A Touch of Genius," Dick York in "The Reluctant Hero," Rita Moreno in "Vendetta," David Janssen in "Show Me a Hero," and Tuesday Weld in "The Velvet Trap." How often have so many given so much to something so little? Michener should have been proud.

This essay originally appeared in Black Lamb in 2003 as part of a joke issue.