Tradecraft: Ugly Betty Producer Spies For ABC

Deadline reports that former Ugly Betty producer Silvio Horta has sold an "action comedic drama" to his old network, ABC, with Easy A director Will Gluck. Kell Cahoon (Psych) will pen the script. According to the trade blog, "Mrs. Miller centers on a retired CIA operative whose quiet, comfortable suburban life is turned upside down after she’s pulled back into the world of espionage. Determined to keep the two worlds secret and separate from each other, she must now lead a double life where the queen bee housewife in her neighborhood can be as menacing as an arms dealer in Beirut." When I read the title, I was picturing a sort of Mrs. Pollifax-type Murder She Wrote with spies. (Is it weird that that notion appealed to me?) But reading further, it sounds much more like Desperate Housewives with spies... or Scarecrow and Mrs. King meets Missing? Not quite as original, but could be cool nonetheless. We shall see. (Well, maybe. If it gets picked up.)

Your Mission... Watch the New Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Trailer

It's here! My initial reaction is that it looks good. I'm still more excited for this movie than I have been for any other Mission: Impossible movie. If I have one main gripe about this trailer, it's simply that it contains too many moments we've already seen in M:I movies (like Jeremy Renner doing the familiar Topkapi dangle from Brian DePalma's inaugural entry, below). I guess it will be sort of like GoldenEye, a "best of" referencing what's come before. That's okay as long as Brad Bird makes it work in its own right, which I have faith he will...

Tradecraft: Actresses Turn Spy Producers

Tradecraft: Actresses Turn Spy Producers

Actresses Anne Hathaway (Get Smart, The Dark Knight Rises) and Ellen Pompeo (Grey's Anatomy, Catch Me if You Can) are both trying their hands as first-time producers—and they're both starting out with spy projects. Deadline reports that Pompeo has sold a TV series to ABC dealing with the DSS, or Diplomatic Security Service. The DSS is a fascinating branch of U.S. law enforcement because they're the most widely spread out around the world, and (I believe) the only one to routinely carry arms overseas. Part of the DSS's mandate is protective service for American diplomats including the Secretary of State, and I believe this is the branch that Pompeo's project will primarily focus on since it's based on an Elle Magazine article about female bodyguards. But the DSS also handles counterterrorism and counterintelligence. In fact, they're the ones who would investigate a CIA agent attached to an American embassy overseas if the agent became suspect. I've long thought that the DSS were ripe for a good movie or TV project (and have even gotten as far as a treatment for one myself), so I'll be interested to see where this project goes. The Rock actually played a DSS agent in Fast Five, but the agency itself wasn't explored at all. In that case, it was merely a means to have a heavily armed American law enforcement officer firing off a lot of rounds in a foreign country. According to the trade blog, Pompeo's untitled pilot is being written by Mike Sussman, who created the upcoming TNT drama Perception. "The TV project will revolve around Diplomatic Security special agents who travel the world protecting American officials on diplomatic missions and will explore the personal and professional challenges these young women and men face while taking on one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. Sussman will write the drama and will executive produce with Pompeo for ABC Studios."

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter reports that former Agent 99 and current Catwoman Anne Hathaway "has closed a deal" with Paramount to produce and star in the thriller Puzzler. Very few details are available on the project, which will be written by Karl Gajdusek (Trespass), but according to the trade, "the project is described as a female-driven, paranoid thriller in the vein of Three Days of the Condor." That sounds spy-like to me...

Two New Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Posters

No sign yet of that new trailer we were promised yesterday (a short teaser for the trailer appeared at the end of that Burj Khalifa BTS video), but two new posters for Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol have popped up on the Imp Awards. Neither provides the Tom Cruise profile shot that is traditional on Mission: Impossible movie posters, but both are definite improvements over that incredibly lame teaser poster. The IMAX poster is dynamic and exciting and conveys what people expect of this franchise (in its film incarnation), and the actual 1-sheet, featuring Cruise with franchise newcomers Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton and M:I-III veteran Simon Pegg is cool because it's the first M:I film poster that's ever conveyed a team aspect like the great TV series instead of a James Bond-style single superspy alone against the world. I'm hoping the film itself proves true to this concept. (But where on the poster is Josh Holloway, who appears to have a rather large role based on the teaser trailer?) On the downside, TC is still wearing that stupid hoodie. Oh well. Maybe it's supposed to make him look like a ghost? Also, I still find it odd that this campaign is focusing on the uninspired "Ghost Protocol" subtitle instead of the recognizable "Mission: Impossible" brand, which is relegated to a smaller font.

Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (M:I-4) opens wide in the U.S. on December 21 following a limited preview run on IMAX screens beginning December 16.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: InSecurity (2011)

Upcoming Spy DVDs: InSecurity (2011)

TV Shows On DVD reports that the Canadian spy sitcom InSecurity will hit DVD in Canada on November 8, courtesy of eOne Entertainment. With all apologies to my readers to the North, all I can think of every time I hear about a Canadian spy series like this one or the drama Intelligence is James Coburn's great delivery in The President's Analyst of the line, "Canadian spies?!" But that doesn't mean that we can't take Canadian spies seriously. Intelligence does that quite well, in fact. InSecurity, however, doesn't want you to take its spies seriously. Here's how the distributor describes the show:

InSecurity is an action comedy about the men and women of the fictional National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) who keep the nation safe...ish. Each week special agent Alex Cranston and her team of espionage misfits take on a mission vital to national security. They go where others can't go. They do what others won't do. And they screw up in ways that can only be described as world class. But like all great spy heroes, Alex and her NISA team get the bad guys and make Canada a safer place. Just not always on purpose.

InSecurity: Season 1 will retail for CA$39.99, but it's available to pre-order at a discount from Amazon.ca. Even so, the price seems a bit steep for satisfying my curiosity about a series that garnered some decidedly iffy reviews, but as it's unlikely to ever get an American release, I probably will end up importing the Canadian disc at some point, as I'd like to judge this show for myself. InSecurity has already been greenlit for a second season, which airs on CBC this fall.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Publicity Ramps Up

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Publicity Ramps Up
New Trailer Due Tomorrow

The publicity machine is finally going into high gear for Brad Bird's new Mission: Impossible movie. Tomorrow, a new trailer will debut and an Empire Magazine cover story hits newsstands. (Empire, by the way, did a much better job of creating a good promotional image for the film than Paramount's own publicity department did with that awful teaser poster!) And to tide us over until then, Yahoo! has posted this behind-the-scenes video of Tom Cruise performing that big dangling stunt on the side of the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

So does anybody recognize that version of the Mission: Impossible Theme? I'm guessing it's probably something created exclusively for the trailer, like the famous Parodi/Fair Bond Theme from the GoldenEye teaser... but maybe not. Anyone?

Tradecraft: Homeland Renewed

Tradecraft: Homeland Renewed

Deadline reports that Showtime has renewed Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa's Homeland for a second season. Homeland, the 24 producers' latest spy series, stars Claire Danes as CIA agent Carrie Mathison, Mandy Patinkin as her Agency mentor and Damian Lewis as a freed American POW Mathison suspects may in fact be a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda. Personally, I have yet to see an episode (even though it was my most highly anticipated show of the fall), but I look forward to catching up soon!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Smiley Classics

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Smiley Classics

Today sees the reissue (timed to coincide with Tomas Alfredson's eagerly-anticipated theatrical remake due in U.S. theaters this December) of two absolute classics of spy television, the John Le Carré adaptations Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). Both star the incomparable Alec Guinness as George Smiley, the unassuming spymaster who can ferret out moles at the highest level of British Intelligence and match wits with the Soviets' most devious minds, but can't keep a diet or hold together his marriage. Smiley is one of the all-time great characters in spy fiction—brilliant and at times even ruthless, but very human and deeply flawed—and Guinness brings him to life perfectly, disappearing completely into the part.

These two superb British miniseries are adaptations of the first and third novels in Le Carré's so-called "Karla Trilogy," chronicling Smiley's ongoing battle with his Russian counterpart, Karla, who's played (fleetingly) by Patrick Stewart. (The second book in the trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy, was reportedly not filmed because the Beeb couldn't afford its Far Eastern locations. That's a shame, because it's an excellent novel.) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is probably my favorite spy novel of all time. It's an utterly perfect book, a complex detective story set in the shadowy, shabby world of spies and populated with a cast of extremely rich, unforgettable characters. The miniseries does a remarkable job overall of translating all the novel's twists and turns to the screen and the characters are brought to life by an equally memorable troupe of actors including Ian Bannen (The MacKintosh Man, The Offence), Ian Richardson (Blunt, Murder Rooms), Bernard Hepton (The Contract, The Holcroft Covenant), Hywel Bennett (Percy), Michael Jayston (Quiller, Foyle's War), Anthony Bate (Philby, Burgess and Maclean, Game, Set and Match) and young Duncan Jones (also known as Zowie Bowie, son of David, and future director of Moon and Source Code).

Smiley's People is another fantastic novel and the perfect capper to the trilogy—and, more importantly, even more fertile material for television. It's a pacier story that sees Desk Man Smiley thrust back into the field at an advanced age, unwinding a deviously complicated spy plot that starts with a murder in Hampstead Heath and ends in Moscow, with the elusive Karla. The thrilling puzzle unfolds all across Europe, from London to Paris to Switzerland and beyond, and introduces us to a new assortment of perfectly-drawn characters who dwell in the shadow world of Cold War tensions, as well as welcome familiar faces from the first miniseries.  Newcomers include many spy genre veterans, like Vladek Sheybal (From Russia With Love, Casino Royale), Eileen Atkins (The Avengers), Michael Byrne (Saracen, Tomorrow Never Dies), Curd Jürgens (The Spy Who Loved Me, OSS 117: Murder For Sale), Michael Lonsdale (Moonraker, Day of the Jackal), Andy Bradford (Octopussy), Michael Gough (The Avengers, The Saint), Ingrid Pitt (Jason King, The Adventurer), and even Ian Fleming's niece, Lucy Fleming (Cold Warrior, The Avengers) as Molly Meakin! A young Alan Rickman also shows up, in a part as brief as Patrick Stewart's.

Acorn's reissues are repackaged in slimmer cases (flippers the width of a single DVD), which is always welcome when you have a large collection, but the discs themselves are exactly the same as the company's previous Region 1 releases. On the plus side, that means they have the same extras (exclusive interviews with Le Carré on both titles); on the minus side (and it's a considerable minus), that also means that they are the American versions of the shows. Both miniseries were cut for U.S. broadcast. Tinker, Tailor was actually re-edited from seven episodes into six; Smiley's People merely had each of its six parts shortened. Surprisingly, the effects of the cutting aren't as bad as you would think. The American versions of these shows are still first-rate television, and they work. You don't really realize that you're missing anything. But if you have access to a multi-region DVD player, you still might want to consider importing the Region 2 DVDs to have the complete versions. (They're remarkably cheap, too.) If you don't have all-region capabilities, go ahead and get the Acorn DVDs. Whichever version you see, it's bound to be classic spy television of the most essential variety. Acorn's DVDs retail for $49.99 apiece (a reduction from the old MSRP), but can both be found much cheaper than that on Amazon.

Tradecraft: Universal Follows Ludlum's Janson Directive

Yay! Another Ludlum adaptation in development! Keep 'em coming, Hollywood... and can you do me a favor and actually make one? (One that doesn't have "Bourne" in the title, just for variety?) The latest of the late author's titles to spark the interest of a movie studio, according to Deadline, is his posthumous work The Janson Directive. While a number of books continued to trickle out under his name for years after Ludlum's death, sculpted to varying degrees by various ghost writers, The Janson Directive was the first posthumous title out of the gate, and supposedly mostly completed by Ludlum. It certainly reads like it, anyway, and however much work his editor did finishing up, it was a job well done. The Janson Directive benefited from the momentum Ludlum got from his late career renaissance with its predecessor, The Sigma Protocol. Both are very cinematic books, and should make good movies. Charged with setting Janson in that direction for Universal and Captivate Entertainment (the company built on Ludlum's library of titles) is scribe John Hlavin, who wrote for The Shield and penned an Underworld movie. I'll be interested to see if Hlavin keeps Paul Janson as a Vietnam vet (that war plays a very major role in the book), or attempts to update the story to make him a younger man more in keeping with Bourne. Personally, I hope they keep him on the older side. I can't see another conflict successfully filling the role that Vietnam plays in the book, and I like the idea of a Ludlum movie (or potential franchise) built around an older hero, akin to the Taken series. If anything, that's proven there's a market for old guys who kick ass. Come to think of it, Liam Neeson would make a pretty great choice for Paul Janson!

Tradecraft: Black List Black Ops Script Finds a Buyer

Tradecraft: Black List Black Ops Script Finds a Buyer

Deadline reports that "indie film company Royal Road Entertainment has acquired rights to The 13th Man screenplay by Enio Rigolin." The spec script made Hollywood's prestigious Black List in 2010, a list of industry professionals' favorite unproduced screenplays. According to the trade blog, the script follows "a mail clerk-turned-code breaker whoʼs thrust into the fledgling CIA to stop an elite squad of Nazi saboteurs from destroying the U.S."

Tradecraft: Andy Garcia to Play Former Spook Seeking The Truth

Tradecraft: Andy Garcia to Play Former Spook Seeking The Truth

According to Deadline, Andy Garcia will star in an indie action thriller called The Truth alongside Forest Whitaker, Eva Longoria, Kevin Durand, Kim Coates and Deborah Kara Unger. The trade blog reports that "Garcia plays an ex-CIA op-turned-political talk show host. He’s hired by a corporate whistleblower to expose her company’s cover-up of a massacre in a South American village." The Truth is written and directed by Damian Lee, who's better known for direct-to-video thrillers starring the likes of Dolph Lundgren (Agent Red) and Michael Dudikoff (Moving Target).

Tradecraft: Fox Buys Teen Spies

Tradecraft: Fox Buys Teen Spies

Deadline reports that Fox has snapped up a teen spy TV project from The Playboy Club's Karyn Usher and Pink Panther director Shawn Levy's production company 21 Laps. The trade blog describes the potential series as "a procedural thriller centered on the orphaned 17-year-old daughter of a CIA operative who is recruited to become an operative herself." The idea originated from Levy's producing partner Mary Adelstein, who took it to Usher.

Tradecraft: Warner Bros. Developing Brad Thor's Takedown

Tradecraft: Warner Bros. Developing Brad Thor's Takedown

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. has changed tacks in their attempt to turn Brad Thor's Scott Harvath novels into a film franchise. Instead of beginning with the first book in the series, The Lions of Lucurne (which was the plan last December), the studio is now eyeing the fifth book, Takedown, and has hired Ryan Craig (Small Town Saturday Night) to adapt it. According to the trade, Takedown finds ex-SEAL-turned-counterterrorism agent Harvath out to thwart a terrorist hellbent on creating chaos in New York over the 4th of July weekend. I haven't read these books, but based solely on their descriptions, the globehopping Lions of Lucerne sounded way, way cooler. (Although I must admit I am intrigued by the "3-foot-tall freelance intelligence operative known as 'The Troll'" mentioned in the Amazon review of Takedown!) Also, doesn't it make sense to begin at the beginning? I hope they re-think this strategy.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: MI-5: Volume 10 Hits U.S. Shelves Early Next Year

Upcoming Spy DVDs: MI-5: Volume 10 Hits U.S. Shelves Early Next Year

Confirming what we already suspected, the BBC America Shop blog (via TV Shows On DVD) reports that Americans can expect the current, final season of MI-5 (the long-running British spy series known as Spooks in the UK) on DVD "earlier next year." I'd imagine that's supposed to read "early next year," as we're used to MI-5 seasons coming out in January, and it's pretty hard to get much earlier than that. That means that for once, the US release will be nearly in sync with the UK one, which comes out at the end of November. Presumably this was the endgame in mind when BBC released two volumes of MI-5 in the U.S. this year (Volume 8 in January and Volume 9 in June), making it possible to catch up in time for the final season. Sweetening the deal, the blog reveals that there will be some special features on this final release, which is nice, since early seasons offered a wealth of bonus material but the last two have been bare-bones. The extras mentioned at this point include the "Top Ten MI-5 Moments chosen by the cast and crew and 'Harry’s Game,' devoted to MI-5’s most constant character [Harry Pearce, played by Peter Firth]." The show's series finale airs in Britain tomorrow night, and it was reported earlier this week that a fan-favorite character who departed the series many seasons ago would make a welcome (if fleeting) return. Cover art and price for the Region 1 DVD set are not yet available.

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 1

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 2

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 3

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 4
Read my review of MI-5: Volume 5

Tradecraft: Is Bradley Cooper the New Napoleon Solo?

Tradecraft: Is Bradley Cooper the New Napoleon Solo?

Variety reports that Bradley Cooper is the new frontrunner to play Napoleon Solo in Steven Soderbergh's Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie. The trade reports that Matt Damon and Johnny Depp both passed on the part (to which George Clooney was originally attached), and Cooper's agents worked hard to position him for the part of U.N.C.L.E.'s top agent. The offer is now out to him and he's expected to accept, with shooting set to commence in March before Soderbergh helms his Liberace biopic for HBO. The spy role would bring Cooper's career full-circle, since he first rose to stardom on a spy series playing Will on J.J. Abrams' Alias. I really liked him on Alias, and I was sorry when Will left the show... but, honestly, I can't picture the Hangover star filling Robert Vaughn's shoes as Napoleon Solo. Hm...

Tradecraft: Matthew Vaughn Mulling Spy Project?

Tradecraft: Matthew Vaughn Mulling Spy Project?

According to The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog, Matthew Vaughn is mulling his follow-up to this summer's Bond and Avengers-inspired, Sixties-set superhero hit, X-Men: First Class (review here). One of the candidates is a film version of a comic book Vaughn created with Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons called The Secret Service. The trade blog reports that "plot details are under wraps," so we don't even know if the titular secret service is Her Majesty's Secret Service or the U.S. Treasury Department's Secret Service. But either way, it definitely sounds spyish, doesn't it? After X-Men: First Class, I would absolutely love to see Vaughn do a full-on spy movie. He's come close plenty of times. In the early 2000s, he was attached to direct a film version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and he and his regular writing partner Jane Goldman co-wrote the script for The Debt (review here). I hope he goes all the way with this one!

Tradecraft: FX Drones On

Tradecraft: FX Drones On

Deadline reports that FX is developing a "dark comedy" about the pilots who fly the CIA's UAVs and "commute to war." It's called Drones. That's a play on words. Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia and novelist Chad Kultgen will produce.

Movie Review: Killer Elite (2011)

Movie Review: Killer Elite (2011)

Killer Elite tells the supposedly true story of a 1981 showdown between a team of professional assassins (led by Jason Statham's Danny) and a team of ex-SAS officers (led by Clive Owen's Spike) known as the Feathermen (so named for their light touch), all elite killers. (It's loosely based on Ranulph Fiennes' "non-fiction novel" The Feather Men.) The circumstances that lead these groups to battle each other are rewardingly convoluted, but the overall gist is that a wealthy sheik exiled from Oman wants revenge for the deaths of his three sons in a conflict in which the British weren’t officially involved. He’s somehow gotten the names of the SAS soldiers he thinks killed them. Danny is the best assassin in the world, but he’s inconveniently retired, having sworn off killing after a child got in the crossfire during a botched Mexican assignment. So to lure him out, the Omani sheik kidnaps his former mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro—surprisingly not just phoning it in!) and uses Hunter's liberty as leverage to force Danny to track down and kill each of the men on his list. However, the sheik doesn’t want to incur retribution, so he must make each death look like an accident. Spike, however, isn’t fooled. He’s the operational leader of a secret society of ex-SAS soldiers sworn to protect their own. So when he hears about strangers asking questions about Special Forces soldiers who were all on the same Omani mission, he gets suspicious and activates his network. Spike and his men attempt to protect the Oman veterans, while Danny and his men attempt to take them out, setting the two British action heroes on a collision course.

It may seem like an odd choice, given this scenario, to focus on the assassin (Statham) rather than the former soldier (Owen) as the protagonist, since Owen seems like the ostensible good guy here. But upon reflection, it’s a very good choice. Assassin movies generally focus on the proverbial “one last job,” and show their heroes trying to get out of the business in order to make them relatable. Danny is already out, but he’s forced back into the game in order to protect the people he cares about: first Hunter, and then his young fiancé, Anne (played by Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski, using her own Australian accent for once). Thereby, the assassin gets our sympathies, while at the same time the nobility of the SAS in that undeclared war in Oman is called into question. The result is a film without any clear “good guy” (“Some good guy,” Owen says of himself after behaving in an un-good-guy-like manner), but opposing killing machines in shades of gray, both of whom you want to root for—not in the least because of the appealing stars playing the roles. Other characters operating in the same gray area include Danny’s and Hunter’s untrustworthy boss (Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who brokers hits, and a mysterious MI6 man who just might be pulling everybody’s strings to achieve his own dubious ends. The latter character gets a great entrance, especially for spy fans. He lands in an unmarked helicopter to meet Feathermen boss Commander B (The Man From S*E*X baddie Nick Tate, driving a Silverbirch Aston Martin DB6) and, when asked his identity, snidely explains, “I’m the guy they let fly around in an unmarked helicopter with a gun in his pocket, but you can call me Mifwig—Motherf#cker What’s In Charge.” (I know, the acronym doesn’t quite work, but it’s fun!)

Those expecting a straight-up Statham action-fest along the lines of his neo-Eurospy Transporter movies or Crank may be disappointed. This is a rather sprawling tale of intrigue that has more in common with The Bank Job or Steven Spielberg's Munich—though it’s not quite on the level of either of those films. (In fact, it reminded me quite a lot of Spielberg’s story of a team of assassins set in the same general period—even if the motives for this team aren’t nearly as noble.) For me, that made it all the better. The Cold War setting is well-realized for the limited budget, and Australia does an ample job standing in for far-flung locations like Oman, Dubai, Wales, Paris and London.

That’s not to say, however, that there isn’t some typically awesome Statham-style action as well. In one early scene, Statham gets to demonstrate some patented lightning-fast moves when he attacks a guard with a teacup. In one of the most badass (if not entirely plausible) moments of in-the-field ingenuity I’ve seen this side of Bourne, he then proceeds to grab a loaf of French bread and tear it in half. What’s he doing? Is he hungry, in the middle of a battle? No, he’s improvising a silencer! Statham sticks his small-caliber pistol entirely inside the loaf of bread (along with his hand) and uses it to muffle his next shot at close range! (Actually, maybe that’s not so far-fetched as other movie silencer moments. I suppose the bread would effectively diminish the sound of escaping gasses, and at such close range it wouldn’t seriously affect his accuracy.) Later on, we get two different versions of the Statham-vs-Owen showdown we’ve been waiting for (their first go is interrupted), with the second one resulting in that shot you’ve no doubt seen in the trailers where Statham manages to disarm his opponent and then flip backwards out of a window all wile tied to a chair! I’ll grant that moments like this awkwardly stand apart from the more serious ones and make it rather difficult to believe the film’s claims of being “based on a true story,” but Jason Statham is one star who can actually pull that off. We expect that kind of move from him, and therefore adjust our sense of disbelief accordingly.

Director Gary McKendry struggles a bit with the pace. All that globe-trotting seems to slow things down a little rather than speed them up. Still, the film is drenched in the atmosphere of its era, and that—coupled with three very compelling leads—goes a long way. It’s no masterpiece, but Killer Elite is still a rewarding viewing experience for spy fans and Statham fans, occupying a middle ground somewhere between the sublime excess of Transporter 2 and the grounded speculative history of The Bank Job.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Colombiana

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Colombiana

Is Zoe Saldana the perfect stocking stuffer? Clearly Sony think so. DVD Active reports that the studio will release Luc Besson's latest neo-Eurospy effort, Colombiana, on DVD and Blu-ray on December 20. Written by Besson and his Taken cohort Robert Mark Kamen and directed by future Taken 2 director Olivier Megaton, Colombiana stars Zoe Saldana as a waifish assassin with a penchant for very large guns in the tradition of Besson's Nikita. And it's a lot of fun. (Read my review here.) The DVD, set to retail for $30.99, will feature deleted scenes and two featurettes ("Colombiana: The Making Of" and "Cataleya's Journey"); the Blu-ray ($35.99) will include all that as well as three additional featurettes ("Assassins," "Training A Killer," "Take The Ride") and a Colombiana PS3 Wallpaper/Theme. (Does that really count as a feature?)

Tradecraft: Fox Books New CIA Drama From Former Spook

Tradecraft: Fox Books New CIA Drama From Former Spook

Deadline reports that Fox has bought a new spy pilot from Imagine Entertainment (24) written by former CIA officer Joseph Weisberg. Weisberg's TV credits include Falling Skies and Damages, but, more relevantly, he's also the author of the novel An Ordinary Spy. I haven't read it, but it's been praised for its verisimilitude, so he sounds like the right guy to pen a realistic drama about the Intelligence Community. According to the trade blog, "the hourlong project... is described as a high-stakes character-based drama centering on the young assistants of high-ranking officers in the U.S. Intelligence community. The show takes place within the walls of the CIA, as well as the DIA, NSA, FBI and the intelligence components at the White House." I'm so on board! Inter-agency relations and conflicts are the bread and butter of some of my favorite spy writers, but rarely are they portrayed on screen in nearly as compelling a manner. While the British shows do it well (I love that barely-civil Season 1 Spooks encounter between MI5's Harry Pearce and MI6's Jools Siviter, or the one-upmanship those two agencies engage in in the third story of the UK Strike Back), the tendency in America, as seen on Alias and 24, among others, is to make one agency (usually the NSA, it seems) bad and have it always running roughshod over the others. How many times did the NSA take over CIA operations on Alias to the detriment of the field agents? From a real-life former spook, I'd expect a more nuanced look at the subtler office politics involved in cooperating and bargaining with other agencies. This project doesn't have a title yet, but given its specific milieu, it's one of the spy shows in development right now that I'm most excited about! I really hope it ends up going to series and lives up to its potential.

A Former Star Returns For Spooks/MI-5 Series Finale

A Former Star Returns For Spooks/MI-5 Series Finale

Digital Spy reports that one of the few former stars of Spooks (known in the US as MI-5) whose character managed to leave the series alive will return for the show's finale, which airs in the UK next week. The site couched their report in spoiler tags, so I won't reveal who (though fans can probably count the number of survivors on one hand, so it shouldn't be too hard to guess), but if you don't care about that you can find out by following the link here. I will say that the person in question is probably my favorite Spooks character (or second favorite after Harry), so I definitely welcome their return.

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 1

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 2

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 3

Read my review of MI-5: Volume 4
Read my review of MI-5: Volume 5

Tradecraft: Leo to Play Alan Turing?

Tradecraft: Leo to Play Alan Turing?

Deadline reports that Warner Bros. has spent seven figures to acquire a red-hot script by first-time screenwriter Graham Moore about the life of genius codebreaker Alan Turing called The Imitation Game. The script is based on the definitive 1983 biography of Turing by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, and the trade blog reports that Leonardo DiCaprio "has the inside track" to star, with Ron Howard interested in directing. (Though the project would undoubtedly take him close to the familiar ground of math geniuses and codebreaking that he covered in A Beautiful Mind.) DiCaprio seems drawn to biopics (he was even once rumored to be considering playing Ian Fleming in a film his production company is developing), and at least he's the right age for this one (his baby face never works for me in old age makeup), even if he'd have to pull off an English accent.

Besides his crucial role in creating the modern computer, Turing is best known now for his secret work during WWII at Bletchley Park, where he and his colleagues successfully cracked the supposedly un-crackable German Enigma codes, striking a huge blow for Allied intelligence and turning the tide of the war. Despite his heroic service, Turing suffered an ignoble fate after the war when he was prosecuted for homosexuality at a time when it was still illegal in Britain. Horrifically, he was sentenced to a form of chemical castration and chose to commit suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple—widely believed (though perhaps apocryphally) to be the inspiration for the name and logo of Steve Jobs' computer company. The Enigma machines (there were several different ones, with different numbers of rotors creating totally different codes) have inspired a lot of spy fiction and movies already, most notably Michael Apted's superb 2001 Robert Harris adaptation Enigma, written by Tom Stoppard and produced by Mick Jagger, for which John Barry provided his final score, capping his career in the spy genre that launched it.

Each Enigma machine the allies captured has a thrilling story behind it, but the story likely best known to readers of this blog is one that never occurred. Ian Fleming, working for Naval Intelligence during WWII, proposed a plan (with the full support of Bletchley Park) to capture a 3-rotor naval Enigma in an operation dubbed "Ruthless." According to a Fleming memo published in Craig Cabell's Ian Fleming's Secret War, Operation Ruthless entailed sending a "tough crew" of German-speaking British airmen out in a captured Heinkel 111 bomber and crashing it in the English Channel to attract a German rescue boat (ideally a minesweeper). When the crew was pulled out of the water, they would overpower the German sailors, capture the craft and sail it and its precious code machine back to Britain. Sadly, the operation was cancelled. (There are varying accounts of the precise reason for this, but the one most commonly cited it bad weather.) This frustrated Turing, who was very keen indeed to get his hands on this particular prize. Frank Birch, head of the Naval Section at Bletchley Park, wrote a memo to Fleming that's reprinted in Cabell's book in which he complained that "Turing and [his colleague] Twinn came to me like undertakers cheated of a nice corpse two days ago, all in a stew about the cancellation of Operation Ruthless." Needless to say, Fleming was none too happy about it himself.

I merely mention this anecdote, of course, because it's likely to be of interest to readers here. Operation Ruthless was but a footnote in the history of Bletchley Park; it's highly doubtful it will feature at all in The Imitation Game. Alan Turing's contribution to the British war effort was far, far more significant than Ian Fleming's, and his is a fascinating story that I can't wait to see unfold on the big screen.

Tradecraft: Warners Accepts an Envoy

Tradecraft: Warners Accepts an Envoy

According to The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog, Warner Bros has acquired a spec script by former Project Greenlight contestant Robert Lynn called The Envoy for Joel Silver's company to produce. The trade blog reports that "the story centers on young diplomatic courier whose routine delivery turns deadly when it’s discovered the sensitive information he carries contains stolen plans for an attack on American interests. He must make it to the American embassy in Vienna while various forces try to stop him." Even though its origins are squarely right here in Hollywood, USA, The Envoy's European setting gives it the potential to become the latest in the spat of neo-Eurospy movies kicked off by the success of Luc Besson's Transporter films. Silver and Andrew Rona produced Unknown, Liam Neeson's second crack at that genre (which the Hollywood Reporter, less glamorously, calls "international thriller") following his Besson-produced box office smash Taken. Read my review of Unknown here.

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Ever since we first heard there would be a sequel to the 2008 Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy hit Taken (review here), the big question has been who will get taken this time? It would be pretty weak if former CIA agent Bryan Mills' daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), got randomly snatched yet again the next time she traveled to a foreign country on her own! (And pretty unlikely that her dad would even allow her to take such a trip, for that matter, having found his crazy over-protectiveness fully justified.) Happily, that won't be happening. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog has the first plot synopsis I've seen for the sequel in an article about the casting of ubiquitous Russian bad guy Rade Sherbedgia (The Saint, Mission: Impossible II, 24) as the villain of the piece. (Of course he is!) According to the trade blog, "Sherbedgia will play Murad, the father of a kidnapper slain by Bryan Mills (Neeson) in the first film. Murad is described as a vengeful man who gives orders and doesn't take them. When Murad takes Mills and his wife hostage, their daughter is enlisted to help save them." Hm. Well, I was hoping that Famke Janssen (GoldenEye) would get to play a larger role in the second film, and assuming she's the wife in question (the couple were divorced in the first movie), I guess she will. The part that surprises me is the notion of Kim rescuing Bryan. I'm assuming that Bryan will find plenty of ways to kick ass on his own, even in captivity. (Die Hard-style?) But I can't quite wrap my head around Maggie Grace in an expanded action role. She was by far the weakest link in the first film. But she was good on Lost, so we know she's capable of better. The biggest problem with her part in Taken was that she was required to play seventeen at twenty-five, and over-compensated by playing Kim as if she were twelve. Hopefully in this one, given that some time has passed, Kim will be allowed to have grown up a bit. Perhaps producer Luc Besson was so impressed with Grace's performance in his upcoming Guy Pearce neo-Eurospy actioner Lockout that he decided to expand her part? We'll find out when Lockout opens next April. Taken 2, as reported earlier this week, will open Columbus Day weekend 2012, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Colombiana's Olivier Megaton. The action takes place in Istanbul.

Trailer For McG's Spy-Com This Means War

Trailer For McG's Chris Pine/Tom Hardy Spy-Com This Means War

I like McG's slick action style in the Charlie's Angels movies, I like the notion of combining the spy genre with romantic comedy (hopefully with more success than the risible Killers), and I like Ricki Tarr and the future Jack Ryan. I don't like Chelsea Handler. It's kind of tough to tell from this trailer, but I'm hoping the former elements outweigh the latter in This Means War. After all, McG has proven he's got a knack for mixing comedy with superspy hijinx week after week on Chuck!

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season

This week sees the release from Warner Home Video of the Timothy Dalton-enhanced Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season on DVD and Blu-ray.  The penultimate season of the NBC spy comedy was reinvigorated with a very effective injection of Dalton. (Every flagging series could use that pick-me-up in its fourth season!)  The former James Bond star was a delight to watch in all six episodes he guest-starred in, but his presence as season-long villain Alexei Volkoff was felt even in those he didn't.  It was a great role for him, and he clearly relished it; the multi-faceted, tailor-made part afforded him the opportunities to play villainous and heroic, comedic and psychotic, to be by turns both quietly subtle (like his Bond) and scenery-chewingly over-the-top (like his Doctor Who role or his scene-stealing turn in Hot Fuzz).  Overall, the season is well worth watching for Dalton fans, even if they've never seen Chuck before.  And it's well worth watching for Chuck fans, too!  I suppose that goes without saying, but I thought this year marked a real improvement over the previous season.  Besides taking on Timothy Dalton, Chuck reunites with his possibly villainous/possibly good/definitely estranged mother (played by Linda Hamilton), proposes to his longtime love and spy handler, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), and loses and regains the powers of the Intersect a couple of times.  And Casey (Adam Baldwin) is Casey, which is always worth watching. 

Chuck: The Complete Fourth Season includes all twenty-four Season 4 episodes as well as the usual plethora of bonus features Chuck fans have become accustomed to. Extras on the DVD will include deleted scenes (sorry, "declassified scenes"), a gag reel, the featurettes "Chuck Versus Directing: Zachary Levi Takes Charge on 'Chuck Versus the Leftovers'" and "Operation Gomez: Spying on the Cast: Joshua Gomez Shows Off His Newfound Spy Skills," and "Chuck Versus the Webisodes: The Chronicles of Jeff and Lester's Quest for an Elusive Video Game." The Blu-ray will include all that as well as the exclusive "Top Secret Chuckapedia Interactive Experience," whatever that is. Retail for the Blu-ray is set at $69.97; the DVD is $59.98. (Of course, both are available for far less on Amazon.)

Tradecraft: Strike Back Strikes Back Again

Tradecraft: Strike Back Strikes Back Again

Deadline reports that Cinemax has picked up Strike Back for a second season, which will be the show's third overall, counting its superior first season in the UK. (Though, to be fair, that version was almost a completely different show with a different cast.) In keeping with Strike Back's history of killing off leads, the cable network has not revealed next season's cast, meaning that nobody is safe until the first Cinemax season wraps up on October 21. According to the trade blog, production on the new season will begin in South Africa early next year. UK producing partners Left Bank and Sky are back on board (with Sky again set to air the series in Britain), as are executive producers Andy Harries and Huw Kennair-Jones, producer Michael Casey, head of production Marigo Kehoe, directors Bill Eagles and Paul Wilmshurst, and writer Tony Saint. Saint will write "a number of episodes" as well as co-executive producing. Glaringly absent from that list of returning personnel is EP Frank Spotnitz (writer of nearly half the episodes this year), who recently defected to another Cinemax spy show, Nemesis, starring Melissa George.

Read my review of Cinemax's Strike Back here.
Read my review of the original UK version of Strike Back here.

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Deadline reports that the eagerly anticipated and long-in-the-works neo-Eurospy sequel Taken 2 will open in North America on October 5, 2012—Columbus Day weekend. I had figured that Fox would want to open the action follow-up in the same January frame in which the original movie performed so well, but happily we will not have to wait until Q1 2013; instead we can expect more Liam Neeson badassery in slightly less than a year! As previously reported, Taken 2 will film in the classic Eurospy location of Istanbul under the direction of Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana), with a script by the writers of the first film, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Read my review of Taken here.

Book Review: Dead Spy Running by Jon Stock

Book Review: Dead Spy Running by Jon Stock

Jon Stock’s Dead Spy Running is an exciting, well-written, and compulsively page-turning spy thriller in the globetrotting Robert Ludlum vein. It follows a suspended British agent named Daniel Marchant, son of the late, disgraced former head of MI6, Stephen Marchant, as he races the clock to clear them both of accusations of treachery. Along the way, he dodges not only bombs and bullets, but also the divergent agendas of supposed allies MI5, MI6, the CIA and the US Secret Service (sometimes mistakenly referred to—in the British edition, anyway—as the "Security Service").  Despite having a few misgivings of the decidedly nitpicky variety (like that one), I found it to be a really enjoyable read and a good start to a new spy series. (I believe Stock envisions a trilogy of Marchant tales, the second of which, Games Traitors Play, is out in paperback in the UK this week.)

Dead Spy Running is a page-turner from the very beginning. Things get off to a great start in an exciting opening set at the London Marathon. Marchant is running on a whim (actually, more the whim of his girlfriend—fellow agent Leila—than his own) and just happens to spot a very suspicious participant laden with a belt full of bottles he’s not drinking from. It turns out to be a Speed-like scenario, and the bottles—really explosives, of course—will detonate if the runner doesn’t maintain pace for an eight-minute mile.  It’s all part of a rather elaborate terrorist plot to assassinate the American ambassador—a plot Marchant manages to thwart. Neither MI5 nor the CIA, however, put much stock in the coincidence of a suspended officer (whose loyalty they already doubt because of aspersions cast on his father) just happening to stumble upon such a plot, and instead of being hailed as a hero, Marchant finds himself on a CIA rendition flight to Poland, water-boarded and accused of collusion with the terrorists.

Quotes on the jacket (“A Jason Bourne sweat-fest with George Smiley’s brain!” exclaims the Daily Telegraph, thus coining my least favorite new phrase of the decade in “sweat-fest”) and log lines for the film (in development with McG’s company since before the book was even published as a directing vehicle for Syriana’s Stephen Gaghan) all evoke the somewhat unlikely union of John Le Carré and Robert Ludlum—and that’s clearly deliberate from the get-go. Dead Spy Running is quite sensibly—and very carefully—based on the template of Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (The previous spy chief is dead in disgrace after becoming obsessed with a mole in MI6 who he couldn’t successfully identify despite a private, last-ditch mission to do so). And why not? You could do a lot worse than modeling your spy thriller on the greatest espionage novel of all time. Onto that are grafted elements of Bourne, Alias and Len Deighton’s "Game, Set, Match" trilogy—mostly with admirable success. But despite the Le Carré jumping-off point, Dead Spy Running hews more closely to the escapist adventure fare of Ludlum and Ian Fleming than the grim, gritty, and unfailingly depressing realism favored by Le Carré and Deighton.

It bothered me a bit that rather than being content to deliver a fantastic piece of escapist entertainment, Stock seems to aspire to a level of realism that’s not really compatible with the more sensationalist aspects of his action-packed story. He even does that thing that all spy writers do when they want their books to appear more gritty and realistic than they are: he disparages James Bond. When spymaster Marcus Fielding relates what tour guides say about MI6’s famous “Legoland” headquarters complex, it amounts (in his words) to “the usual Bond nonsense, M’s office.” Sure, Bond may be nonsense, but let’s not kid ourselves: so is Dead Spy Running. Thrilling, engrossing nonsense—just like Bond. (Happily, Stock makes up for the slight against 007 by dropping in lots of little Easter eggs for spy fans, like a butler who learned English from Sixties spy fare and says things like, “Be seeing you,” and a foreign advisor to the PM named Bruce Lockhart.)

The ending feels a bit rushed and sloppy and finally devolves into one of those “Dumbledore explains it all” final chapters in which one high-ranking MI6 officer conveniently outlines all the details of the plot that the hero couldn’t have learned otherwise (and probably wouldn’t have the clearance to know anyway). The head of MI6 makes way too many excuses for the mole who’s wreaked havoc in his organization for years, throwing around adjectives like “courageous” and “selfless” because the author wants to associate those attributes with the flawed character’s actions. That's okay, but attributing such sentiments to the Chief of the Service seems wrong. (Can you imagine Smiley calling Gerald selfless or courageous?) Furthermore, connections between Al Qaeda and an organization/country not typically associated with them (though sometimes speculated to be) are drawn hastily and sketchily for the sake of expedience, but not spelled out enough to really make sense. Perhaps that will come in the sequel. For now, though, it’s a shame that a book that for the most part goes out of its way to delineate different religious sects and factions makes a sort of “they’re all against us together” leap at the end.

Suddenly my positive review of a book I very much enjoyed isn’t seeming as positive as I intend it to. I think the reason that I found myself so hung up on these small details is because, overall, I liked the book so much that they stood out more glaringly than they would have in a novel I was otherwise indifferent towards.  Dead Spy Running comes so close that I desperately wanted it to succeed one hundred percent, and ended up getting sidetracked by the small things.  The only people those things are really likely to bother are spies and spy fans.  As for the former, well, they seem like a tough crowd to please with popular literature about their profession.The latter, however (i.e. readers of this blog), I strongly encourage to read this book and ignore the minor faults. I suspect most will enjoy it as much as I did. 

While he might lack the master’s attention to detail, something John Stock has in common with John Le Carré is a handy turn of phrase. Stock is a very good writer (even if he does use the phrase "cerulean sky" twice within two chapters), and the result is an escapist thriller told in far superior prose to what I’m used to from popular practitioners of this genre, like Ludlum or Dan Brown—yet retaining those authors’ gifts for pacing and plot twists. The result is a gripping, fast-moving and genuinely sexy (much more-so than Le Carré ever mustered on that front!) page-turner that I didn’t want to end. I’m looking forward to revisiting these characters in Games Traitors Play, and I’m equally looking forward to seeing them realized cinematically in Gaghan’s film. Now that I’ve read the book, that’s quickly become one of the spy movies on the horizon that I’m most eagerly anticipating. I hope it comes to fruition and lives up to its source material.

The Interceptors: Top Gear Parodies ITC Credits Sequences

The Interceptors: Top Gear Parodies ITC Credits Sequences

I suppose I'm a bit behind on this, but we get new episodes of BBC's Top Gear in America a few months after they air in Britain... and in my house we're a few weeks behind even on that, just catching up with On Demand. So while catching up last night I was delighted to hit upon a recent episode in which Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond decide to put on Jason King mustaches and create a Seventies ITC-style title sequence for a show in the vein of The Persuaders, The Protectors, Department S and all the rest called The Interceptors, all based around a new version of the Jensen Interceptor car, which immediately makes Jeremy think of Sixties and Seventies detective series. To that end, they all put on mustaches and cut their own very funny, spot-on ITC title sequence to the tune of Edwin Astley's Department S theme. Note the detail on the exploder remote, the model boat, the Tony Curtis driving gloves, the stock footage shot of Rio's Christ the Redeemer and what a great William Gaunt Richard Hammond makes. About the only thing they left out (and these car guys really should have known this one) is the famously reused shot of the white Jag going over the cliff that popped up in just about every one of these shows. (And, as my girlfriend pointed out, a shot of Jeremy angrily hanging up a phone, a la The Adventurer, would have been welcome as well.) But overall, it's pretty awesome. Awesome enough, indeed, that The Interceptors has already spawned a dedicated fan site!

For the benefit of a trio of twenty-something ladies, Jeremy starts by explaining what it's all about. "In the Sixties and Seventies, the TV schedules were awash with detective shows like The Baron, Department S, The Protectors, The Persuaders!, The Saint, The Avengers.... You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Let me explain. They were all basically the same. Okay, every week, a good looking man would run into a swanky hotel, punch a swarthy-looking man in a fez, and then go to bed with a pretty lady. Anyone here old enough to remember that? The only difference was the cars they all drove. This is Brett Sinclair, Aston Matin DBS. Steed had a Broadspeed Coupe Jag [on The New Avengers], and there is the Saint with his Volvo P1800. Now the interesting thing is almost none of them ever drove the Jensen Interceptor...." (Actually, I think both The Protectors' Robert Vaughn and The Champions' Stuart Damon drove this car, though neither one regularly, and the Baron drove its crazy-looking relative the Jensen CV8.) Jeremy and his cohorts then set out to rectify that by devoting a whole fake show to the Italian-designed British car.

Page 9? Bill Nighy Hints at Page 8 Sequel

Page 9? Bill Nighy Hints at Page Eight Sequel

Harry Palmer Movie Site webmaster Kees Stam chimed in with a comment on my recent post about the upcoming DVD and Blu-ray of the BBC spy film Page Eight providing a link to a video interview in which star Bill Nighy says the David Hare telefilm might be the beginning of a franchise. When the BBC anchor asks him, "Do you think there's a possibility that this character of yours could live on and you could find yourself playing this agent in lots more portions of the same thing?" the actor replies, "Well, I'm lobbying very hard. I'd be very happy! I wear a dark blue overcoat, I smoke herbal cigarettes in the rain, I stand on Battersea Bridge in the dark and you have to worry about what I am thinking. It's a kind of perfect role. Uh, but yeah, there are moves; they are keen to have more, so there may be, uh... there may be." I haven't even seen this film yet (which airs in America on PBS on November 6), but I'm still excited at the notion of a follow-up! More serious spy movies are always a good thing, of course, but even moreso when they star the likes of Nighy, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon and Rachel Weisz. The interview begins with a good clip from the film showcasing Nighy's performance, which might interest American viewers like myself who haven't yet had the opportunity to see Page Eight.