Trailer for SAS Drama 6 DAYS

The first trailer is out for 6 Days, an SAS thriller about the same 1980 hostage standoff in the Iranian Embassy in London that inspired the action classic Who Dares Wins (aka The Final Option). Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Kingsman), Jamie Bell (TURN: Washington's Spies) and Abbie Cornish (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) star, along with the late Tim Pigott-Smith (Quantum of Solace) in one of his final performances and, in a nice touch, Who Dares Wins star Lewis Collins' old Professionals cohort, Martin Shaw. While there's still no release date officially set, Deadline recently reported that Vertical Entertainment "is eyeing a fall theatrical bow in the U.S. for the pic." Netflix is distributing in a number of international territories.

First Image of Dominic Cooper as Stratton

Empire (via Dark Horizons) has unveiled the first photo of Dominic Cooper (Fleming, Agent Carter) as titular special forces operative Stratton, a role he inherited from Man From U.N.C.L.E. star Henry Cavill when Cavill dropped out at the last minute. Clearly Cooper didn't have time to grow as full a beard as Cavill had carefully cultivated (seen during the early days of his U.N.C.L.E. press tour), but he still looks the rugged part armed to the teeth with a slightly scruffy chin. In the film directed by Simon West (The Mechanic, The Saint) and based on the novels by Duncan Falconer, SBS (the Royal Navy commando unit which Empire snarkily describes as "like the SAS, only with extra canoeing") Intelligence Detachment operative John Stratton must chase down an international terrorist cell through Central Asia, Europe and London, all while contending with the damage done by a mole inside MI5. Austin Stowell (Bridge of Spies) co-stars as a heroic, hardened American Navy SEAL who teams with Stratton on his mission. Derek Jacobi (Circles of Deceit), Thomas Kretschmann (24), Tom Felton (Harry Potter), Gemma Chan (The Game) and Connie Nielsen (3 Days to Kill) also star.

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.

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.

DVD Review: Circles of Deceit: Sleeping Dogs (1995)

DVD Review: Circles of Deceit: Sleeping Dogs (1995)

Sleeping Dogs is the second of the Circles of Deceit TV movies (recently released on DVD from Acorn) starring Dennis Waterman as an aging former SAS soldier turned MI5 operative John Neil. After the tragic events of the first movie, The Wolves are Howling (review here), Neil has retreated back into his private, alcohol-fuelled seclusion in Northumberland. But he did a good job on the Irish mission, and seems too good a man to let go without a struggle. So when his former colleague, played by Susan Jameson, is appointed Controller of MI5 (remember, this is ’95, the same year Judi Dench took over as M during Stella Rimington's tenure as the first publicly identified Director-General of MI5), she seeks him out and basically dares him to come out of retirement. Between SAS veterans who’ve seen combat together (in a highly unconvincing flashback set in Libya in 1983, made to look even sorrier in comparison to the combat scenes in the recent SAS drama Strike Back), that seems to work. And so, a little bit fitter than when we last saw him, with additional facial hair (which becomes him), and with a trendy new female boss instead of Derek Jacobi, John Neil is suddenly back in action and the one-off drama Circle of Deceit has, two years later, become the series Circles of Deceit.

Sleeping Dogs is much more of an espionage story than The Wolves Are Howling, which dealt with terrorism. Neil is sent to visit an aging former KGB colonel in Paris who wants to sell information. It’s his job to determine if the information is even worth buying four years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “Since the fall of the Wall, it’s a buyer’s market,” he tells the would-be seller, Colonel Petrov.

Petrov is played by portly spy veteran Leo McKern (The Prisoner, Hot Enough For June, Help!) with great joviality, very much along the lines of Oskar Homolka’s Colonel Stok in the Harry Palmer movies. McKern doesn’t even attempt a Russian accent (at least I don’t think he did…), but he’s one of those larger-than-life screen presences who doesn’t need to, like Sean Connery in The Hunt For Red October. Petrov gives Neil two names as a free sample demonstrating the quality of his decades-old intel. Unfortunately, he’s murdered shortly thereafter, giving the Controller plenty of reason to believe that the names are valuable. It’s up to Neil to figure out why.

One of them, Annie Shepherd (Frances Barber, a Reilly: Ace of Spies vet who now plays that eyepatch lady on Doctor Who), is a sexy, mature woman (who teaches adult education classes in German), so of course Neil ends up falling for her, even though she might be a Russian sleeper agent… or worse. The other, Bill Roper, is a wealthy software designer who drives a white Lotus Esprit Turbo. 

The Lotus is involved in a car chase (well, a pursuit, anyway, as Neil follows him, but not at high speed). It doesn’t turn into a submarine, but submersible capabilities aside, any screen time for a white Lotus is sure to increase my opinion of a spy movie—not that it really needs increasing in this case. 

Like The Wolves are Howling, Sleeping Dogs is solid spy entertainment. The production values don’t seem quite as high as they were on the first entry, but there’s still a large enough budget to destroy a few cars and deploy a few helicopters. (And a little of that stuff goes a lot farther in a more serious spy drama like this than it would in a Bond imitation.) There’s also some much more elaborate fighting than in the first movie, including a particularly violent struggle to the death between Roper and an assassin who might be working for the Russians or might be IRA.

Yes, the IRA is involved again (and still harboring a serious grudge against Neil for the blow he dealt them last time out), as are former KGB and Stasi agents, various freelance assassins and Paul Freeman (Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark), all of which adds up to a fun and intricate plot. 

Freeman is so good as a slick, slimy, upper-crust MI5 official that I’m surprised he doesn’t get this kind of role more often! Neil makes an uneasy alliance with a sadistic ex-Stasi assassin and puts his trust in Annie (despite his boss’s belief that she’s a dangerous KGB sleeper) to pull all these threads together and stop an imminent threat to a rapidly approaching summit meeting.

Like The Wolves are Howling (again), Sleeping Dogs doesn’t really bring anything new to the genre, but it does a very good job with tropes tried and true. The plot is a sort of mash-up of various Len Deighton and Ken Follet elements (all good things), and Neil himself (well played by the likable Waterman) remains a compelling, if not terribly original, character. 

Like James Bond, he’s ultimately a blunt instrument wielded by the state. And that seems to give him the edge over the radicals and zealots he comes up against. Unfortunately, it also makes him ideologically incompatible with his potential lover, who’s passionate about her political beliefs. “Petrov explained it to me,” Neil tells Annie, recalling a conversation he didn’t quite understand at the time but comes to over the course of the movie. “He said he never recruited anyone with political beliefs. Just people like me.”

“And what did he mean?” she inquires. “People like you?”

“Just… ones who can’t live any other way.”

DVD Review: Circles of Deceit: The Wolves Are Howling (1993)

DVD Review: Circles of Deceit: The Wolves Are Howling (1993)

The first of four British made-for-TV movies starring Dennis Waterman (The Sweeny, New Tricks) as former SAS operative turned MI5 agent John Neil is identified on screen only as “Circle of Deceit.” I suspect it was originally filmed as a one-off, then did well enough to justify a series at which point the title was apparently retroactively changed to Circles of Deceit: The Wolves are Howling. That’s how it’s identified on Acorn’s Circles of Deceit DVD set at any rate.

Director Geoffrey Sax (Fawlty Towers, Framed, Spice World) apparently likes to set a challenge for himself, so he begins his movie with flashbacks to a circus tragedy, an odd and outdated movie cliché so overused that it was hilariously sent up in OSS 117: Lost in Rio. Yet here Sax more or less pulls it off. Despite that beginning, he delivers a really good drama. Such a beginning, in fact, proves entirely appropriate, because Circles of Deceit: The Wolves Are Howling trades on clichés of this nature, yet handles them all so well that it really doesn’t matter. This movie doesn’t bring anything new to the spy genre, the ex-soldier genre or the IRA infiltrator genre, but it makes an incredibly solid example of all three. And, personally, sometimes that’s exactly what I want out of a genre movie. 

John Neil is an SAS Falklands vet who lost his wife and child two years earlier in an IRA bombing at a circus in Germany. This event provoked his retirement, and he’s been a drunken recluse ever since. Then an amazing coincidence occurs. (The plot hinges on a couple such coincidences, but gets away with it.) An Irishman named Jackie O’Connell dies in a car accident. He was born in Belfast, but has lived in London for the last twenty years or more. And he bears an uncanny resemblance to John Neil. This is too good an opportunity for MI5 spymaster Randal (Derek Jacobi, playing a typically sleazy bureaucrat) to pass up. While O’Connell was not himself a terrorist, he has an estranged brother in Belfast who’s a priest in a parish dominated by IRA soldiers. It’s a rare and perfect chance to place an infiltrator in their midst. With a little prodding from Randal (who isn’t above playing on Neil’s past and hatred for the IRA because of what they did to his family), Neil is lured out of retirement and given a crash course in the Belfast neighborhood he’ll claim to be from and its mostly nefarious denizens. 

Foremost among them is Liam McAuley, a high-ranking IRA mastermind and patriarch of a whole IRA family. Liam is played by stalwart ITC veteran Peter Vaughan (Hammerhead, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Codename: Kyril, various Avengers, etc.). His accent sometimes fails him, but overall Vaughan delivers his usual screen-filling, utterly captivating performance.

Neil makes his entrance at the wake for one of McAuley’s sons, freshly killed by British soldiers. He introduces himself as Jackie to Jackie’s brother, the parish priest, Father Fergal. Fergal gives him a few tests which Neil’s cramming enables him to pass and then readily accepts him as his long-lost brother. Fergal is a sympathetic character, well played by Ian McElhinney. He wants to see the best in everyone and he clearly wants to believe that Jackie has returned, so he’s easily fooled. Naturally, Neil feels guilty for taking advantage of the optimistic man of God, and he may even find a real kinship of sorts with him. But Fergal does not approve of the McAuleys or their methods, and therefore loses faith in the man he believes is Jackie when he starts (per orders) associating with them. One can only imagine how betrayed he’ll feel when it comes out that Neil isn’t Jackie at all, but a British soldier. (A patriotic Irishman to the core, Fergal has even less love for the British than he does for the IRA.) Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as it spares the audience some excruciating discomfort), we never get to see his reaction to that revelation, as the story has moved in other directions by then.

Through Fergal, Neil is introduced to the McAuley clan and even accepted. When Neil hits it off with Liam’s pacifist daughter, Eilish (who shares her family’s cause, but not their methods), Randal orders him to use that connection to get close to Liam. Naturally, Neil develops strong feelings of his own for the passionate Eilish (a very appealing Clare Higgins). He starts to fall in love with her, a turn of events which regular viewers of this sort of drama will know can only end in tragedy. Yes, The Wolves Are Howling is ticking formulaic boxes, but it’s ticking them well.

Waterman is quite good as John Neil, imbuing his every action with enough of a haunted past that we really didn’t need the circus flashbacks. The score by Tim Souster is particularly effective, and melds well with the performances, the settings and the direction to create a suitably gloomy Irish feel. It’s the atmosphere more than the story that stuck with me after watching this, and it’s largely that same atmosphere that makes it feel more like a one-off drama than an entry in (or beginning to) a series.

There is a budget here, enough for convincing location filming and some small-scale military action including helicopters. But that doesn’t make The Wolves Are Howling an action movie. I was expecting action just based on that ex-SAS premise, since action is usually what that premise delivers. Neil himself only does one little bit of fighting, but in true SAS form, it’s a single, lighting-quick surprise move that kills in one blow. No, The Wolves Are Howling is a drama—and a very good one. The story beats aren’t new and the characters are familiar. But the performances are engaging, as is the overall bleak tenor of the piece. (It kind of reminded me of the Patrick McGoohan/Lee Van Cleef IRA drama The Hard Way, another deliberately paced drama whose identity comes from its tone rather than its familiar one-last-job assassin plot.)

Undercover dramas of this nature are inherently heartbreaking, because you know all along that the hero must betray all of the relationships he forms. And you can’t help feeling sorry for some of the people he’ll betray. While the IRA are clearly bad guys here, this telefilm doesn’t really take sides in the conflict. Instead, it questions the methods of both parties. And ultimately it lays the blame at the feet of the English for perpetuating the circle of violence—somewhat surprisingly for something made for British television. Yet just as Circles of Deceit: The Wolves Are Howling isn’t an action movie, it’s also not a political movie. It’s a character-driven drama, and one I found very compelling. While this movie works perfectly well as a standalone, I'm looking forward to seeing where this series—and the character of John Neil—goes from here.

TV Review: Strike Back (US Version) (2011)

TV Review: Strike Back (US Version) (2011)

No, you're not experiencing déjà vu. I did just review a show called Strike Back a few days ago. But this one is... different. Sort of. Read on.

The less you know going into it about the history behind Cinemax’s Strike Back, the better off you’ll be. Which means that American viewers, for whom it’s primarily designed, will be much better off—and presumably more receptive—than British viewers (or readers of this blog). As regular readers will surely be aware, Chris Ryan’s Strike Back (note the possessive credit, which would mean nothing to American audiences) was a successful 2010 UK cable series starring Richard Armitage as SAS operative turned SIS operative John Porter. (Read my full review here.) Evidently US cable network Cinemax liked the format, because they bought it. But rather than simply remaking it, as happens so often in Hollywood, they struck a complex deal with UK cabler British Sky Broadcasting to co-produce the expanded second season and make it so that it would work as a follow-up to the first season for British audiences and an all-new series for American audiences coming fresh to the property without having seen last year’s installment. (It’s a sort of similar thing to what AIP did with Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, for those looking for weird spy precedents.) Further complicating matters was the fact that none of the show’s original stars were available for an immediate second season as, somewhat ironically, they’d all gone Hollywood. (Armitage is starring in The Hobbit for New Line, Andrew Lincoln stars on AMC’s The Walking Dead, Shelley Conn stars on ABC’s forthcoming dinosaur show Terra Firma, and Toby Stephens was at the time of filming already starring in another US remake of a British show, Prime Suspect, from which he’s since been fired.) The somewhat sloppy result certainly favors the American audiences, who will indeed require no background knowledge of what’s gone before to get into the new version of the show—and will probably enjoy it all the more for that.

For those who have seen the first season, the new installment can’t help but come off as a disappointment, as it completely abandons the excellent set-up from the end of the first series (which should have led to a thrilling showdown between Armitage and Stephens, among other things). Furthermore, John Porter, who made quite a compelling lead in the UK series, is unceremoniously killed off in the first half-hour to make way for new leads Stonebridge and Scott, the former a Brit played by American Philip Winchester (Camelot) and the latter an American played by Australian Sullivan Stapleton (Animal Kingdom). There are those who believe that Porter’s death will prove to have been faked, and while I’d welcome that turn of events, I just can’t see it as he was shot in the head with the same amount of graphic blood and brain spatter with which the new show meticulously augments every kill. Adding insult to injury, prior to being shot he was captured and forced to read off a card, “To the Imperialist powers of the West, I, John Porter, confess to the crime of being a British spy…” While it’s hinted that Porter may have had good reasons for reading the card, the whole scenario is something of an insulting betrayal of the character British audiences warmed to in the first season. We’ll see where they go with this, but off the top of my head I could think of a dozen more satisfying ways they could have integrated the Porter character into the new story on the scant days of shooting for which Armitage was available on his Hobbit sabbatical. (Not the least of which just having him walk out of an office at MI6 headquarters on his way off on an unrelated mission while Stonebridge walks in, indicating that the two men are colleagues operating simultaneously.)

Okay, okay, so the British fans are screwed; how does it work out for the Americans coming to it with fresh eyes? Not altogether badly, actually. It’s a wholly different show not only in terms of talent in front of and behind the cameras, but also in terms of tone. Where the UK version prided itself on some degree of realism, the American version (as I’ll call it, because that’s clearly what it is, ostensible co-production or not) happily embraces the sort of over-the-top action and violence associated with Jason Statham movies. And the new leads, while a far cry from Armitage, prove themselves thoroughly watchable.

The set-up is still the same, at least. The new Strike Back still follows operatives of Britain’s ultra-secret Section 20, a division of SIS that handles highly dangerous assignments, utilizing Special Forces soldiers as well as its own agents, most of whom are drawn from their ranks anyway. There’s a whole different crew at MI6 headquarters. I really would have liked to see Colin Salmon or Jodhi May pop up to just give the illusion of continuity, but they’re absent and unaccounted for. Instead we have a long-haired blond woman, Captain Kate Marshall (Eva Birthistle), and a short-haired brunette, Colonel Eleanor Grant (Amanda Mealing), running the show. They send a team on an attempt to rescue the captured John Porter, only to watch the team walk into a trap. We’ve seen this scenario before in the “Iraq” episode of the original series, but then this is a quasi-remake as well as a continuation so I suppose the repetition is forgivable. Reminding us that it’s a new show (as if we needed any reminders), we launch from this teaser into an all-new title sequence with a new theme song. (Pity they didn’t use the Propellerheads song that opened the final episode of the UK show!)

So Porter’s missing and Marshall sends her other best guy, Michael Stonebridge (Winchester, who's got Sean Bean's profile), to go find an American Special Forces soldier named Damien Scott who once worked with Porter and is supposedly the only other man alive who can identify a terrorist called Latif. Stonebridge travels to Kuala Lumpur to locate Scott (Stapleton), an excursion that’s really just an excuse for some tits and some MMA-style fighting. This is, after all, Cinemax! Eventually Stonebridge gets Scott back to London (now conveniently identified with an on-screen caption as "London, United Kingdom," presumably for the benefit of us backwards American newcomers who don't know where London is) where Scott rubs his new superiors the wrong way (as Americans are wont to do in Britain according to TV) and insinuates himself into Stonebridge’s home life—much to the latter’s dismay. The groundwork is laid for a “classic” (which is to say wholly unoriginal but entirely acceptable for this sort of show) Brit-and-American buddy relationship. (Their relationship instantly recalled Saracen for me, another UK show about a pair of ex-Special Forces soldiers, one British and one American.) Stonebridge is a disciplined soldier and apparently a good family man (though this portrayal is cleverly and surprisingly upended in the second episode) and Scott is an upstart American and ladies’ man who was dishonorably discharged. Reinforcing Strike Back’s new mandate to cast aside even lip service to realism, Scott doesn’t undergo any refresher training the way Porter did before he's whisked off to Delhi on his first assignment.

He and Stonebridge are quickly dispatched on an operation at the Royal Lotus, a Delhi luxury hotel where Section 20 believe that Latif is holed up. There, Scott barely has the opportunity to hit on two women and bed one of them before they get caught up in a Die Hard-in-a-hotel scenario, which isn’t nearly as interesting as the more intelligent plots of the UK version. (In fact, dyed-in-the-wool spy fans just saw that on Undercovers last year—but luckily for Strike Back no one else was watching.)

The Cinemax version prides itself on doing things that wouldn’t happen on network shows—even 24—like graphically killing off innocent hostages, including children. Excessive gore and slight misanthropy aside, one way in which the new Strike Back does resemble the old one (probably thanks to returning director Daniel Percival) is in its action sequences, which are still top-notch. In its coolest moments, the gunplay happens much faster than we’re used to, and the swiftness of it never fails to shock and surprise. The shootouts play like whole action scenes made up of that shock gunshot from Taken!

Gone, though, is the Sandbaggers-like realistic sort of interagency rivalry that characterized the UK version (particularly in “Afghanistan”). Instead, British Intelligence works unrealistically closely with Pakistani intelligence, and happily agrees to let them take full control of shared assets, happily trusting that they’ll share all the intel gleaned from said asset! The new incarnation of Strike Back takes 24-like turns of stupefying illogic, like Section 20 accepting foreign intelligence officers at complete face value without bothering to check their credentials or even run a check with their agencies to make sure they really are who they say they are!

I can tell this is going to frustrate me. I know I’m entering into an abusive relationship, but I can’t help it. Strike Back Version 2.0 is not the show I fell in love with on DVD, but it is pretty fun spy action in the total turn-off-your-brain sort of way that one would expect of Cinemax. Ultimately, the Cinemax version of Strike Back is a pretty kick-ass action series where one of the heroes catches a bomb. That’s right, catches a bomb. Like, the kind planes drop. That’s a far cry from the reality-based action of the UK Strike Back, but I can’t really dislike a show where someone catches a bomb. Can you? If your answer is yes, then you definitely don’t need to shell out for a Cinemax subscription. But if your answer is no, you’ll probably find something to enjoy—especially if you haven’t seen the British version, which is still not available on Region 1 DVD.

I do hope, though, that the producers are doing a Bourne Legacy kind of thing, running a placeholder, and planning to do a proper follow-up to the UK Season 1 after Richard Armitadge is done with The Hobbit. Because that’s something I’d definitely pay cable rates to see! But it probably isn't the case.

DVD Review: Chris Ryan's Strike Back (UK Version) (2010)

DVD Review: Chris Ryan's Strike Back (UK Version) (2010)

I’d imported the DVD of the 2010 UK series Strike Back a while ago, right after the Cinemax sequel/remake version was first announced, but didn’t get around to actually watching it until recently, prompted by all the inescapable advertising for the US cable series. On the one hand, I’m really glad I watched the original version first, because it’s excellent—way better than I’d expected it to be, honestly. On the other hand, I have a slight regret that it will completely spoil the American version for me (which I had been excited for), because I know there’s no way that it will live up to this one.

The original series of Strike Back (officially known as "Chris Ryan's Strike Back"), produced in the UK for British Sky Broadcasting (yes, B Sky B, that cable network that was in the news so much at the beginning of the summer because of Rupert Murdoch’s failed buyout attempt), stars MI-5’s Richard Armitage as disgraced former SAS man John Porter. I’ve always had a soft spot for SAS action flicks like The Final Option. There’s something a bit romantic about Britain’s special forces like the Special Air Service that plays well on film and television—and even better when combined with spying, as is the case in Strike Back. On top of the intriguing, action-packed premise, Strike Back offers compelling characters (something of a rarity in the modern military action genre) played by first-rate actors like Richard Armitage (who I liked fine on Spooks, but liked much more here!), Andrew Lincoln (who I didn’t even realize was British when I saw him on The Walking Dead), Colin Salmon, Toby Stephens, Ewan Bremner, Shelley Conn, Jodhi May and more. It’s also got a very appealing and modern style. From its purposely washed-out color scheme (perfect for the many desert settings) to its creative use of subtitles and chyrons, the show quickly defines itself with a unique look and impressive production values.

Strike Back is divided on DVD and Blu-ray into three feature-length episodes (“Iraq,” “Zimbabwe” and “Afghanistan”), but they were originally broadcast in two parts each, making it a six-part series on television. Each feature stands on its own, but they also form an ongoing storyline with a rich payoff in the third one for events set into motion in the first. I recommend watching them all, and in order.

“Iraq,” directed by Daniel Percival (Dirty War, The State Within), introduces us to SAS soldier John Porter (Richard Armitage) during a 2003 mission in Basra. Leading his team to rescue a British hostage from an Al Qaeda in Iraq safehouse, Porter elects not to shoot a 13-year-old kid with a bomb. In an inquiry following the operation, the military deems Porter therefore responsible for the subsequent deaths of three men under his command, including his best friend. He’s dishonorably discharged and spends the next seven years living in shame, estranged from his wife and daughter and basically living on the charity of his former comrade-in-arms, Hugh Collinson (Andrew Lincoln).

Collinson is now a bigwig in MI6, leading the elite and ultra-secret Section 20. Section 20 seems roughly analogous to Jeffery Deaver’s version of the Double O Section in Carte Blanche: it has access to the resources of both the SIS and the SAS, but doesn't seem to be an official part of either. Collinson does, however, seem to answer to higher-ups inside MI6, including Colin Salmon, M’s former aide who must still be hanging around the building from the Pierce Brosnan days of Bond. Collinson has seen to it that Porter’s been steadily employed as a lowly security guard in the SIS parking garage, and he even reluctantly agrees to take him on as a Section 20 agent when it appears that the same young man Porter spared as a boy, As-Ad, is now responsible for the kidnapping of a female British journalist who also happens to be the daughter of a former high-ranking minister.

When he’s suddenly re-commissioned (at the insistence of Salmon’s character, James Middleton, since he figures they need to grasp at any lead—no matter how slim—given the pressure SIS is facing from the government), Porter undergoes some quick refresher training. Soon enough he finds himself back in Iraq—but sidelined at the base while a crack SAS squad, Alpha Team, helicopters off to the compound where MI6 believes the hostage is being held. Section 20’s Layla Thompson (Jodhi May), who appears to be the official liaison between MI6 and SAS, accompanies them on the chopper, but doesn’t go in when they raid the compound. Good thing, too, because it’s a trap and they’re quickly wiped out, which leaves Porter as Britain’s last hope. Before he can even be officially tasked, however, he’s already commandeered a Range Rover and gone off on his own rogue mission into Basra convinced he knows where to find the terrorists.

In Basra, Porter is out of uniform and totally undercover, like Matt Damon’s character in Green Zone. Like Green Zone (review here), Strike Back presents a rare glimpse in popular culture at the actual battlefields of the War on Terror. (Well, close enough, anyway. The impressive South African shooting locations certainly made a convincing Basra to me, though I must admit I’ve never been there.) Just as Europe was the backdrop to the Cold War, I suspect most Western spies today are concentrated in the Middle East, yet spy movies and TV for the most part have yet to catch up with that new paradigm. Hollywood seems convinced to keep the spying in Europe (maybe because it's cheaper to approximate?), so this focus alone makes Strike Back fairly unique among the landscape of today’s spy TV shows.

The backdrop may be different, but John Porter still behaves like we want our classic movie spies to behave. Out of uniform, he’s still armed, and he’s got some nifty spy gadgets on him, like a cool set of lock picks. He even actually manages to smuggle a knife in his rectum when he knows he’s going to be captured, which is as impressive a feat as it is painful to contemplate. (Truth be told, I’ve sometimes wondered why we don’t see TV and movie spies pulling that sort of trick more often.) He also kills a lot of people, and doesn’t shy away from Jack Bauer-like methods of on-the-go interrogation. Strike Back is nothing if not fast-paced, and the action is quite good.

When we’re not following the action in the field, we’re following the action in the Ops Room back at MI6 (SIS), delivering that classic Sandbaggers Field vs. Desk dichotomy. The two are even frequently linked, as is the case later in the episode when Collinson, from London, is giving direct orders to an SAS team in a helicopter in Iraq. Regular readers will know that I’m a sucker for that Field/Desk formula, but Strike Back adds an interesting new element into the mix. By the end of the first episode, Porter has learned that Collinson is most likely a fraud—the one who’s really responsible for the deaths that Porter has taken the rap for for the past seven years. This extra wrinkle adds a crackling new layer to the standard relationship between field agents and their bosses back in London. It’s not that Porter suspects Collinson of treason (as we’ve sometimes seen before), but that he suspects him of a very personal betrayal. At the same time, though, the two men have a shared desire to do whatever it takes to protect Britain’s interests, meaning that their goals align… even if they’re personally—secretly—at odds. This unique dynamic fuels the next two installments.

The second combined episode, “Zimbabwe,” is probably the weakest of the three—but still well worth watching. It opens explosively with an assassination attempt on real-world dictator Robert Mugabe. The assassin fails and is captured, which presents a problem for the British because he’s ex-SAS. Mugabe will put him on a show trial and claim that he’s MI6, and that Britain tried to kill him. Porter’s mission is to get him out of prison, and if that fails… to make sure by any means necessary that he never goes on trial. Porter and Layla have suspicions of their own. Why go to all this effort… unless there’s some truth to the Zimbabwean claims? Could the assassin have really been working for MI6 after all? Not even Collinson seems to know for sure.

Porter goes undercover in the prison where the assassin, Felix Masuku (Shaun Parkes), is being held. (Well, I say “goes undercover,” but what that entails, of course, is getting himself arrested.) As one might expect of a Zimbabwean prison run by the military, it’s not one of these country club establishments. It is, in fact, a very unpleasant place, and soon enough Porter’s involved in illegal bare-knuckle fights that the prison guards bet on. Meanwhile, Layla is posing as a South African policewoman trying attempting to “extradite” Porter. Nothing goes according to plan and her cover is blown, but Porter still manages to escape with Masuku and the two of them find themselves on the run together across Africa.

At this point, the writers throw every sort of African obstacle they can think of at them: soldiers, desert, warlords, native trackers, a Butch and Sundance plunge into a muddy river… even a cobra! A side trip to save a bunch of kids in an orphanage run by nuns risks veering into 24: Redemption territory, but Strike Back’s approach is altogether less maudlin than 24’s. In fact, in keeping with the series’ generally realistic tone, it’s pretty gritty and horrible. The horror is driven home when Porter comes upon a mass grave full of children.

To say that it’s not maudlin, however, is of course not to say that Porter and Masuku abandon the orphans and the nuns and leave them to their fate. They dig in and use all of their Special Forces training to defend the school against a warlord’s men and Mugabe’s men. Porter once again demonstrates a knack for killing, which earns him a slap from one of the African nuns despite the fact that he just saved her. “I’ve seen a lot of killing,” she tells him. “Most men seem to take pleasure in it. But you… You’re like a machine. I don’t know which I find more frightening.”

Meanwhile, back in London, Collinson and the Operations team try to figure out what the hell is going on with the almost-assassin. Was it an MI6 mission? Or is there a rogue agent in their midst working with the Mugabe government or even pursuing a private agenda? The answers actually takes Collinson back into the field in the final act and face-to-face with Porter. Layla has come to share Porter’s suspicions about their boss, but they’re still all fighting on the same side, even if they don’t trust each other. That thread won’t come to a hilt until the third and final episode…

The third two-parter is by far the best, and the main reason I rate the entire series so highly. But I would certainly not advise skipping the others. Part of what makes “Afghanistan” so good is the way it concludes some of the ongoing story arcs.

“Afghanistan” feels different from the other two, right from the opening moments when a Propellerheads song accompanies fast-moving, POV helicopter shots of the desert. (I haven’t heard the Propellerheads on a soundtrack in about a decade, but hearing them here stokes my nostalgia for late 90s spy and action movies. Their music was among the very best of the John Barry-inspired wave of soundtrack trip-hop.) This can probably be attributed to a different director from the others. Spooks (MI-5) director Edward Hall takes the reins for this part, and instantly makes his presence felt, despite maintaining the distinctive overall style of the series.

“Afghanistan” is the “Bad Americans” episode, an episode that any regular viewer of UK spy dramas knows is a requisite of the genre over there. (Spooks has even managed to stretch it into an entire season!) Speaking strictly for myself, this is one American who secretly relishes the Bad Americans episodes. It just adds another layer to that whole inter-agency in-fighting that makes the Desk side of the spy genre so juicy. Instead of simply MI5 vs. MI6, when you throw the CIA into the equation, the stakes are instantly raised. In Strike Back, surprisingly, the face of the CIA is a very recognizably British one: Die Another Day villain (and Kim Philby in Cambridge Spies) Toby Stephens. Even though I’m used to seeing Stephens as a quintessential Oxbridge snob, I had no trouble accepting him as a quintessential Ivy League snob instead. In fact, his American accent is pretty darn good as UK TV goes—even if the rumors are it wasn’t good enough for US TV. (He was dropped from the American version of Prime Suspect—supposedly because of his accent.) Anyway, it’s the snob part that’s important here, not the accent, and Toby Stephens has the reprehensible, reptilian snob role down to an art form. Here he harnesses those powers to play obnoxious CIA liaison Frank Arlington, who marches into MI6 headquarters like he owns it and takes charge of Section 20’s latest operation, because it directly affects US interests in Afghanistan.

Taliban fighters have gotten their hands on a system that can override UK missile guidance, and on several occasions (including this episode’s budget-busting opening) that’s enabled them to re-route missiles fired from UK air support to hit the American forces they were supposed to be supporting instead of their intended target. Section 20 suspect that the man behind this scheme is probably Gerald Baxter (Trainspotter Ewan Bremner in an excellent performance), a Scottish weapons designer who’s apparently gone nuts and gone native in Afghanistan, bringing his technology to the Taliban. But what was he doing there in the first place? Was he sent in on behalf of MI6 or MI5? Or even the CIA? Collinson has his reasons to suspect that Baxter was working for one of those agencies, but they’re all quick to disown him now and save themselves any embarrassment. John Porter is sent in to extract Baxter and learn the truth. To those ends, he goes undercover as an arms dealer named “Tom Wallace.” While it seems kind of unlikely that this name is a deliberate Queen & Country reference, it’s still tempting to believe, as this is a very Queen & Country-like episode! The spy references (real or imagined) keep flying when he assures a suspicious Baxter, “I’m not here to play Our Man Flint.”

Like Queen & Country and its primary inspiration, the Seventies TV classic The Sandbaggers, this episode of Strike Back perfectly balances the Field and Desk storylines. The tough decisions and political maneuvering made by Collinson in London directly affects Porter in the field (well, desert), and Porter’s actions on the ground likewise affect those decisions back at HQ. While the undercover Porter is captured by (along with Baxter) and subsequently escapes from American forces, Collinson and Arlington play the clubland buddy-buddy game, having drinks at Collinson’s posh club as they move their imaginary, opposing chess pieces. All pretense of civility fades pretty quickly, however, when the boorish Arlington declares, “The Anglo-American love-in? It’s over. And there’s a go-it-alone strategy on the table in the White House. So, if I were you, I’d think twice before having principals.” From then on, it’s a game of constant one-upmanship between them. At each meeting, the upper hand changes based on Porter’s actions in the field. This is gripping stuff—every bit equal to the action and explosions going on in the desert. The situation also serves to actually get the audience rooting for Collinson. Because we know him to be a coward, we’re usually against him, but you can’t help root for him when the alternative (Stephens) is so entertainingly unpleasant.

As Collinson spars with Arlington in clubs and offices, Porter has his hands full with Baxter in the Afghan desert. Once again, the locations (still South Africa, I think) are truly commendable, and certainly stand in for Afghanistan much better than a quarry in East Anglia or California scrubland would. I was convinced, anyway.

With the Americans and the Taliban on their tail in Afghanistan, Baxter offers to take Porter to Zahir Sharq (the ever-reliable Alexander Siddig), a warlord he believes can unite all the squabbling factions in the country. Of course, like all terrorists-cum-warlords worth their salt, Sharq is not skulking in a cave in Afghanistan. He’s living it up in luxury in Pakistan. Porter’s uneasy about crossing the border, but Baxter makes a point. “Show me the border,” he demands, pointing to a vast stretch of indistinguishable desert. In this tribal land, he observes, borders hold no meaning, a point further driven home when they arrive at Sharq’s impressive compound. Baxter comments, “This ain’t Afghanistan… and it’s sure not Pakistan. Guess that makes it…”

“Sharqistan,” finishes Porter. Evidently Baxter unlocks a rarely-displayed sense of humor in him. Indeed, the unlikely pair develop quite a repartee, and their banter might possibly have been seen as a model for the new Cinemax version of Strike Back, which stars a duo. “We’re having a bromance!” the mad Baxter declares after Porter saves his life for a second time—and Bremner manages to successfully pull off such a line! He’s very, very good—and so is Armitage. Of course Armitage has been good in every episode, but his talent really shines in the company of Bremner. Baxter turns out to be quite an interesting character. He’s definitely kind of crazy, and politically motivated. He’s got a guilty conscience about deaths his weapons have caused in the past, and that makes him easily manipulated by the British, the CIA, the Taliban and especially Sharq. He’s really an innocent caught up in the very dangerous games of nations—and any seasoned spy viewer will know that situation can’t lead him anywhere good.

In classic fashion, every player is double-dealing everyone else, each with their own agenda. As Collinson tries to out-maneuver Arlington and the CIA, Layla is secretly maneuvering to undermine him at MI6 and Sharq is trying to make a deal with Arlington for Baxter and Porter! It’s a very fluid situation all around, and makes for top-flight spy viewing. And the constant bursts of action are every bit as compelling as the diplomatic skullduggery. Hall keeps a lot of balls in the air with great skill.

Unfortunately, “Afghanistan” as a two-part story and Strike Back as a series (at least in its original incarnation) end on a cliffhanger—and not a lame cliffhanger-just-for-the-sake-of-having-a-cliffhanger sort of cliffhanger as Spooks has on occasion been guilty of, but a genuine, legitimate, story-driven cliffhanger that sets up a potentially awesome second season based around the desire to see a confrontation between Porter and Frank Arlington. Sadly—even infuriatingly—however, that will never come as Strike Back went in a very different direction instead with its second season. Its original stars all got amazing Hollywood jobs on huge projects like The Hobbit, The Walking Dead and Steven Spielberg’s Terra Nova just as B Sky B made a deal with Cinemax to co-produce the second series with American audiences squarely in mind. John Porter would make a brief appearance in an empty gesture to placate fans of the first series, but ultimately the next version of Strike Back would go a radically different direction and those fans would never see the payoff hinted at in the finale of the first series. That’s not a reason not to watch, however. Strike Back in its original form is fantastically entertaining and likely to please fans of the Sandbaggers school as well as action junkies.

The Region 2 DVD (no sign of a US release yet) offers three featurettes. “Spotlight On Location: Shooting South Africa” is an interesting look at exactly what you’d expect—South Africa’s suitability to play Zimbabwe, Iraq and other topical trouble spots as well as itself. It’s got comments from all the key members of the cast and crew, but at a mere three minutes and change, it’s ultimately all too brief for its subject matter. “Guns ‘N’ Ammo: Arming Strike Back” is a more substantial piece at ten minutes, focused on the show’s weaponry and commitment to accuracy and technical details in portraying the SAS. Unfortunately, the key technical advisor, Chris Ryan—who also authored the book the show is based on, earning him that possessive in the UK title—cannot appear on screen (presumably for reasons of secrecy). But the set armorer stands in nicely, augmented by remarks from the actors and producers. There’s a fairly thorough segment on filming with helicopters, a topic that surprisingly I’d never seen examined in much detail before. The real meat of the special features is reserved for the 15-minute “On Strike: Making Chris Ryan’s Strike Back,” an EPK-style featurette that’s mainly promotional, but still manages to explore every facet of the production in at least some detail, including interviews with all the key personnel. Unfortunately, it’s focused entirely on the first episode, “Iraq,” so we don’t get any behind-the-scenes perspective on the other two. Nonetheless, all three special features are welcome inclusions—though I would have preferred something more in-depth like audio commentaries. If you've got the means to play a Region 2 DVD, Chris Ryan's Strike Back comes highly recommended.