MUST SEE VIDEO!
New Yuki 7 Trailer

Oh my God, this is too awesome!  Kevin Dart, the artist behind Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 and its upcoming follow-up Yuki 7: Looks That Kill and Stephane Coedel, his collaborator on the Yuki 7 faux trailer that promoted the first book, have teamed up again on a new trailer to accompany the new volume.  And it's amazing!  This is an exceedingly cool, totally loving tibute to the sexy Sixties James Bond knock-offs that fuelled the Eurospy and Asiaspy genres.  It's chock-full of direct homages to all sorts of classics, beginning and ending with nods to Deadlier Than the Male (the best Eurospy movie of all - review here) and also encompassing references to Modesty Blaise, Black Tight Killers, OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo (maybe; that one might be a coincidence) and more.  Pure bliss!  Watch it, soak it up, live it.  It's fantastic, and I can't wait for the new book!  Thanks to David at Permission To Kill for calling my attention to this video. 



Visit the official Yuki 7 website here.

Read my full review of Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7 (which I really cannot recommend highly enough for fans of Sixties spy movies) here.

DVD Review: OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo aka Atout coeur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 (1966)

DVD Review: OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo aka Atout coeur à Tokyo pour OSS 117 (1966)

If any movie in the series gives OSS 117 se déchaîne a run for its money as the gold standard, it’s OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo. It’s almost on a Bondian plane of existence, in fact–even prefiguring many distinctive elements of the more famous series. This one doesn’t wait for the action to kick in. We’re thrust right into the middle of it, with OSS 117 (once again embodied by the very capable Frederick Stafford) in the midst of a car chase firing at his pursuers with a machine gun. He skids to a halt in a deserty area, shoots some holes in a convenient stack of oil drums, and then hurls his lit cigarette lighter at the barrels, creating a wall of fire between him and the chase cars. The first car slams on the brakes, but the second plows into it anyway, sending them both into the inferno. A helicopter touches down and OSS 117 jumps in. This might not pass muster as a James Bond pre-credits sequence (this was, after all, the same year 007 flew a jetpack), but it’s a slam-bang opening for a Eurospy movie, proving once again that the OSS 117 films are at the top of the heap in terms of budget and production values.

The titles–and Michael Magne’s distinctive theme music–kick in as the helicopter flies away, and then we’re back in the familiar briefing room where a new boss (I don’t think it’s ever the same one for secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, although his many-faced superior is always named Mr. Smith) explains that “a few months ago the State Department was contacted by a mysterious organization.” Apparently this organization (later conveniently referred to as “the Organization”) has created “a new missile which can be neither detected or destroyed.”

“Oh, it’s the usual blackmail,” theorizes OSS 117, correctly. It turns out that the usual CIA man has just been killed, too (as tends to begin these movies), but we picked up the story after the fact, following Hubert’s escape after failing to make contact with the dead man. The agent was onto this Organization. Without his report to go on, the authorities are back at square one. We are treated to some of the regular documentary briefing footage–supposedly a US base being destroyed by the undetectable missile–but not for nearly as long as usual. Hubert watches it with some military brass who are perplexed as to how a missile could hit their base so quickly if fired from a plane so far away, as signified by the tiny dot in the sky on the screen. Hubert offers his own theory: “Excuse me, gentlemen. But if it really was an F-107, but a very small F-107, he could be close to the base and still very small in the photo.”

“Hmm,” grumbles a general. “And a very small idea from a secret agent.” The military man spits out those last two words, hinting at some interagency rivalry.

“I think it’s better to have a small idea of a situation,” retorts this secret agent, “than no idea at all.” Take that! All the general’s got in return is a disgruntled “hmph.”

Hubert’s theory is born out by a report from our man in Tokyo which mentions the possibility of miniature fighters. There’s no time for any flirting in Washington this time, as OSS 117 is packed off on the very next flight for Tokyo.

The local station provides him with a native assistant named Saki and a single lead to go on: a married cryptographer named Eva Wilson (the stunning Marina Vlady) who was being blackmailed about an indiscretion to provide information on the American base that was subsequently destroyed. Hubert proposes at once that he pose as her husband, freshly arrived in the country (we’re told the real Mr. Wilson is in Washington), hoping that the blackmailers will either approach Eva again or else approach him with the damning evidence. This gives Hubert a chance to “arrive” once more at the airport (something he likes doing), and be very publicly greeted by his loving wife. Being Hubert–and being a Eurospy–he makes the most of the deception, forcing a lingering kiss on Mrs. Wilson–and then kissing her again whenever the opportunity presents itself!

“You’re taking the role of husband very seriously,” she points out. “Is it considered indiscrete to ask how far you intend carrying the role?”

“Well, when my country’s interests are at stake,” he deadpans, “I stop at nothing.” She laughs, suggesting that she might even be amenable to what he has in mind. Yet, later, when she’s wearing what she calls “a Rube Goldberg outfit” with a wire he’s run from a mic in a broach on her breast (he went out of his way to physically pinpoint the exact position) to a one-way transmitter on the clasp of her bra, she seizes the opportunity to speak her mind. “This is the perfect moment for me to say something, when you can’t answer. Of all the men I ever knew you are the most conceited and while I take all the risks, the gallant colonel sits in his car.” Eva is the only woman in the series who really stands up to Hubert’s gropey chauvinism (or tries to, anyway), and one can’t help but like her for it.

In his defense, however, OSS 117 is not just sitting in his car letting Eva take all the risks. It’s not in his nature. Instead, he’s following her at a good distance, observing over his shades (which double as his radio receiver). He follows her as far as he can, and then follows the blackmailer she was meeting with down the neon rabbit hole of Tokyo’s alien nightlife.

His dreamlike odyssey takes him into some sort of slow motion strip club (a better excuse than most Eurospies need to enter such a place) where he has a camera thrust into his hands upon entering. The women slowly peel off their clothes on stage, striking intermittent poses as anxious men gather round and eagerly snap pictures. But Hubert doesn’t get to linger too long in this bizarre setting, as his quarry moves on out the back door into a neon-lit alleyway. We’re treated to some stellar atmospheric direction which ratchets up the suspense while simultaneously conveying Hubert’s status as a stranger in a strange land he can’t fully understand. The new OSS 117 films would play this for laughs, but co-directors Michel Boisrand and Michel Wyn play it for genuine suspense as the lost spy wanders through a complex maze of forboding alleys. When he finally closes in on his quarry in a second story hallway with noirish lighting, he’s conked on the head and blacks out.

Hubert awakes to find himself staring up at the giggling faces of the strippers from the club staring down at him. But he doesn’t quip that he must be in Heaven as James Bond does when he opens his eyes to his first glimpse of Pussy Galore; despite the bevy of exotic beauties, Hubert is still disoriented. This is a strange world. Things are definitely more Lost in Translation than Orientsploitation (ala Kommissar X or even Panic in Bangkok) until Hubert ruins all this great atmosphere by blurting out exactly the kind of feeble-minded attempt at cross-cultural communication his modern-day Jean Dujardin counterpart might attempt. “Me bump head on ceiling. Me feeling very silly,” he says, trying to explain his confused condition and the nasty lump on his head. Oh well. Way to kill the mood, Hubert!

He’s no more endearing when he gets back to Eva’s place. She’s all alone and scared for her life because of the danger he put her in, and the shameless spy tries to take advantage of the situation with another pickup line. “You’ll see,” he says. “Everything’s going to be alright. And we’ve got all night to talk about it.”

“Has anybody ever slapped your face?” she asks. To that, he tells her she better apologize by kissing him. Still she refuses, so he pulls what might be the biggest dick-move of any Eurospy hero (even Joe Walker never stooped this low!) and threatens to walk out on her, leaving her in peril.

“Well okay, in that case...” he intones, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” asks the panicked Eva.

“Hotel Hilton. Number 122. If anyone tries to kill you, don’t hesitate to call me.”

“Hubert!” She runs after him. He smiles. NOW he’s got her where he wants her!

“Change your mind?” he asks, nonchalantly. Now, presumably because she’s frightened (and admits as much!), she finally gives in and kisses him. “Guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he says smarmily.

“Anything but that,” she mutters as she succumbs to his dubious charm. (The fact of the matter is, Frederick Stafford–like Kerwin Mathews before him–actually has a genuine charisma, and his character shouldn’t have to stoop to such methods!)

In the morning, Hubert pays for his sins by waking to a nasty surprise–or so it seems. An enemy agent targets the sleeping spy in the sites of a sniper rifle aimed through the winking eye of a cartoon lingerie model on the side of a van. (Shades of From Russia With Love–Japanese style.) Thwack! It’s a tranquilizer dart–and a direct hit, right in the neck. However, when the hapless goon goes into the room to claim his sleeping victim, he finds that all the dart has done is puncture and deflate an OSS 117 blow-up doll the agent used as a decoy in his bed! It’s a very surreal moment.

Hubert manages to turn the tables on his surprised enemy, of course, and commandeers the bra truck, which he uses in an entertaining chase scene along some winding roads where he ends up turning his enemy’s dirty tricks against them. Putting the spy in a truck with a cartoon lingerie model is just one of the many creative, outre touches that set Terror in Tokyo apart from its predecessors.

It does have its similarities, as well, though. Again, lots of good travelogue shots of Tokyo at night. If you like beautiful shots of far away cities at night, then the OSS 117 films are the series for you. Terror in Tokyo never gets bogged down in its travelogue aspects, though, as Panic in Bangkok did; instead the travelogue propels the narrative–much as it does in Ian Fleming’s Japan-set novel You Only Live Twice.

In the course of his investigation, Hubert enjoys some more of the unique experiences Tokyo has to offer. He checks out a hostess club with Eva, still trying to find the Japanese man who blackmailed her, and ends up paying four tickets to a hostess for conversation. Eva says she won’t be jealous of a hostess, but she clearly is, leading to some funny banter between her and Hubert before he manages to get her out of the way by sending her home. This leaves him free to leave with the hostess, who takes him to a hotel where other beautiful Japanese girls wash him (he enjoys a Japanese bath a year before 007!) and dress him in a kimono... only to pull a gun on him and thrust him into a room with a giant martial arts expert! (They film calls him a sumo wrestler, but that doesn’t really seem to be his technique.) This leads to a genuinely terrific fight scene, worthy of those that have come before it in this action-packed series. Once again, someone pulls the old 3 Stooges double-finger eye-poke move on Hubert, but this time he’s not fast enough to stop it. The fight ends with him managing to set the sumo wrestler on fire. Of course in any Japan-set spy movie, there will be a scene with people bursting through multiple paper walls, and Terror in Tokyo doesn’t disappoint in that respect. Hubert bursts out the paper walls of the hotel and escapes–still in his kimono!–on a handy motorcycle.

This is another great driving scene (not really a chase scene, but fun nonetheless), again with just the right mixture of live footage and rear projection, as he rides the bike down Tokyo’s steep urban hills... only to end up back in the clutches of the hostess who brought him to the hotel to begin with... who, it turns out, works for the Japanese Secret Service! (Her car is not as cool as Aki’s, though, in You Only Live Twice.) In the back seat is her superior, Kawashi, who doesn’t buy the John Wilson identity. “Your behavior since you arrived in my country leaves me to doubt if it’s as simple as all that.”

“Oh?” asks Hubert, innocently. “Such as?”

“We are inclined to think you are agent of CIA. We think you are OSS 117.”

“I’m too flattered to deny it.” Hubert certainly isn’t one to feign modesty! Kawashi suggests it would be much easier for both of them if they collaborated more directly. “Oh, absolutely,” agrees OSS 117, nursing a predictable ulterior motive. “I am always for close collaboration with charming geisha girls.”

Kawashi waves a tsk-tsking finger. “She is not a geisha! She is a sergeant!” I’d like to report that Hubert walks away chastised, but soon enough this beautiful sergeant is giving him a sensual massage. “Am I the first Japanese girl you’ve kissed?” she asks.

“No,” says Hubert, “but you’re the first sergeant.” Ho-ho! Honestly, it’s no wonder the makers of the new OSS 117 movies couldn’t help picking on old Hubert for his rampant casual chauvinism; he really is worse than James Bond.

Terror in Tokyo is a fantastic ride the whole way through, but in the final act it really kicks into high gear! It’s the third act of a Bond movie, packed with twists and betrayals and fantastic sets and even bigger feats of action than those that came before. When America actually acquiesces to the demands of The Organization and agrees to pay their ransom, OSS 117 (who never gives up, even when his government orders him to) goes rogue to thwart the villains on his own. And rogue leads to more action. There’s another great fight in a spacious Japanese mansion involving a samurai sword, and still another where OSS 117 leaves his hapless antagonist hanging from a phone cord.

The bad guys get away–with Eva–on board a fast cabin cruiser, and make contact with a larger boat whose hull opens up to gobble up their boat–just like a smaller version of the Liparus from The Spy Who Loved Me! (Eleven years before that film, though–and one before the rocket-gobbling capsules of You Only Live Twice.) Luckily, Hubert’s been tailing the cruiser from an airplane, from which he pulls of a very impressive low altitude jump into the water, then uses a speargun to climb aboard the mothership. It’s great stuff!

The futuristic sets on board the ship smack of Ken Adam–as do the Dr. No-like radiation suits the technicians wear as they load the miniature remote-controlled fighter planes. (Yes, Hubert was right about that, of course... and the movie’s cooler for it!) There ensues a Bond-like countdown and Bond-like destruction, followed by a solution so Bond-like that Bond himself uses it under very similar circumstances in The Spy Who Loved Me! And I mean all of that as a high compliment. I usually love watching how Eurospy movies manage to pull off “budget Bond” finales, but they’re even more impressive when they manage to pull of legitimate big budget Bond finales, as is the case here!

What makes the OSS 117 movies great–and generally a cut above other Eurospy series–is that they not only learn the lessons of Bond from the Bond films that have already been, but also manage to anticipate and prefigure what will come later in that series! OSS 117 went to Rio, Thailand and Tokyo before 007, and visited some of the same sights and got into some of the same scrapes. He also battled a villain with a ship-swallowing tanker base and battled Curt Jurgens before James Bond! All that has to count for something. It’s tempting to credit the mastery of the Bond formula demonstrated in OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo to the original Bond director, Terence Young, as he gets a co-story credit on this film. But Philippe Lombard concludes in his booklet that Young probably had very little to do with the movie other than to add marquee-value name recognition–and cash a paycheck. Whoever’s responsible, though, OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo pulls off a pseudo-James Bond movie better than Flint and better than Helm and better than just about any Eurospy movie short of maybe Deadlier Than the Male. Like that film, it would make a great stepping stone for Bond fans eager to explore the wider world of Sixties spy films by starting with something fairly familiar.

As with all the others in the OSS 117 box set, Gaumont’s Region 2 DVD looks great and contains all sorts of cool extras. The major caveat, once again, is that none of it–neither film nor features–is subtitled in English. (OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo was dubbed into English, however, and gray market copies of the English version turn up a lot on Ebay.) Gaumont again serves up a cool sampling of (mostly) spy-related clips from newsreels of the time to create another entertaining pre-film experience. This one begins with a live action guide to being a spy and looking for bugs in your living room and using gadgets and whatnot that plays like one of those Disney cartoons where the how-to book talks to Goofy. It’s also got another one of those silly shorts about different signs of the Zodiac–this time picking on Capricorns, and for some reason containing trick shots of goats jumping down the sides of mountains. More interesting to the spy fan is a bit about how gadgets are everywhere and will be even moreso in the near future. It’s funny but also prescient: the 1966 documentary showcases rudimentary versions of cell phones (giant walkie-talkies) and iPods (a huge record player strapped to a cyclist’s chest into which he can awkwardly insert a giant LP). All of the gadgets appear to also function as either a cigarette lighter or liquor dispenser off some sort. Sadly, that latter part never came to pass; a nice aged malt may be the only function lacking on the latest Apple i-Thing.

As for the film-specific features, there’s a text fact track; if you watch the movie in this mode random facts pop up–in French–throughout the film. Most of them are really quite informative, except when they getting cute instead and needlessly quote other pop culture, like Terminator or Austin Powers. (“Hasta la vista, baby,” it reads when OSS gets on a motorcycle. Ho ho!) To a non-native speaker, this sort of text-based track is much more useful than a French audio commentary would have been. There’s also a 12-minute making-of/interview with co-director Michel Wyn, and an 8-minute featurette on the many fights in the series called “The Fatal Blows of OSS 117" which compiles a greatest-hits montage of scenes from the whole series intercut with an interview with a stunt coordinator. There’s sadly no theatrical trailer for OSS 117: Terror in Tokyo included this time, but the disc makes up for it by offering two mystery trailers instead of the usual one: The Dirty Game (portions of which really were directed by Terence Young) and an Eddie Constantine movie called Fire At Will that looks like tons of fun. Gaumont has put out a great DVD of a really great spy movie. Hopefully one day (perhaps if the new films ever truly catch on?) someone will release this in the US with an English language track and subtitles on the copious features.

Read my introduction to OSS 117 here.
Read my review of OSS 117 se déchaîne here.
Read my review of OSS 117: Banco à Bangkok here.
Read my review of Furia à Bahia pour OSS 117 here.
Read my review of OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies here.
Read my review of OSS 117: Lost in Rio here.

An Excess of Subjectivity: DVD Review: Callan: Set 2

An Excess Of Subjectivity

DVD Review: Callan: Set 2

Overview

I hadn’t seen the first two black and white seasons of Callan yet when I watched the fourth, color season in Callan: Set 2, because they’ve never been commercially available. (That changed last week when Network released them in England. Fingers crossed that Acorn quickly follows suit in America!) I’d been told by people who had seen them (like blogger Medium Rob, who’s an expert on the subject) that they’re the series’ best, and my feeling was that if that’s the case, they must be simply amazing. Because all of the color episodes from seasons three and four that Acorn have released so far (Set 1 began with season three to kick things off in color) have been absolutely top notch, each episode seemingly outshining the one that came before it. Knowing that the fourth season contained in Acorn’s Callan: Set 2 was the show’s last, I expected a downward spiral, at least to some degree. I knew that David Callan himself (the incomparable Edward Woodward), previously a field agent for a shadowy black ops division of MI-5 known only as “The Section,” became Hunter this season, the codename for the chief of the Section. That worried me. Could the show maintain it’s extremely high level of quality with the lead character behind a desk? Obviously other spy dramas did (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Sandbaggers both focus on deskbound spymasters), but Callan seemed to thrive when its lead character got his hands dirty–really dirty. Needless to say, I shouldn’t have worried. Even with series creator James Mitchell penning fewer scripts himself in Season 4 (Set 2), Callan still maintains all of the quality of Season 3 and then some. I think I enjoyed Callan: Set 2 even more than Set 1!

As I’ve stated before, Callan belongs to the “serious” school of spy stories, in a league with Deighton and Le Carré rather than Fleming. But serious, gritty and realistic don’t mean action-free. Callan has the dirtiest job in the profession: he is essentially a government assassin. But he’s not a glamorized government assassin like James Bond; he’s a man who hates his work, but can never leave it. He’s skilled at killing and he’s forced to use those skills; retirement is not an option. But, unlike his colleagues Meres and Cross (Anthony Valentine and Patrick Mower, respectively), Callan takes no joy in his work. It sickens him, but he does it because he must, and because he knows it must be done. His assignments are often messy, and innocent people constantly get caught up–and hurt, or killed–in the games of his controllers and their Soviet counterparts. But just because a spy show is grim and serious doesn’t mean it can’t have action. Callan features far more action than The Sandbaggers or Tinker, Tailor, and Season 4 lays it on even thicker than before. In keeping with the show’s spirit, it’s messy, brutal and often surprisingly grisly (especially for Seventies television) action, but action nonetheless. Does the extra gunplay this season taint its realism? Perhaps ever so slightly, certainly not in its occurrence but in its frequency. But does it make the show more exciting? Undoubtedly. This is a serious spy show that depresses and entertains in equal measure, and the latter cancels out the former.

Callan may present the business of espionage as grim and dreary, but it’s never boring. While I personally enjoy the serious and fantastical sides of the spy genre in equal measure, there are those who prefer one or the other. Callan is a series that can satisfy both tastes. Hardcore realists who scoff at James Bond can nod along at the extistentialism of it all and secretly enjoy action they might otherwise disparage in acceptable doses. And escapists who prefer 007 to Smiley can enjoy that action while at the same time being exposed to the realistic tradecraft, backstabbing politics and masterful manipulations that Le Carré fans are so familiar with. It’s a win/win scenario. Callan is compelling, terrific spy television for every taste.

Episode Analysis

Callan: Set 2 begins with Callan’s smelly thief friend Lonely finding out about Callan’s “funeral” and then rushing off to it. We cut quickly to Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison, where David Callan is very much alive (though suffering an unfortunate prison haircut) and being interrogated by the KGB’s Julian Glover (almost unrecognizable in glasses and mustache). Callan’s response to his Prisoneresque situation is as defiant as Patrick McGoohan’s; he tells his captor to “get stuffed” and refuses to budge in the face of torture and drugs. Meanwhile, Callan’s smug former colleague, Cross (who might enjoy his dirty work just a bit too much) seems pleased to have Callan out of the way. Now he’s top dog in the Section. Cross (a deliciously smarmy Mower) is therefore quite unhappy when ordered by Hunter (William Squire once more, just as reptilian as ever) to escort a KGB prisoner named Richmond to Helsinki to be exchanged for Callan. (We’re treated to nice parallels between Callan’s experience and Richmond’s, both undergoing the same harsh interrogation–and planting the seeds already for the season’s finale.) Obviously, Hunter has no great love for Callan (or even any evident feelings or emotions whatsoever), so it’s no surprise that there are twisted politics behind the trade. As on The Sandbaggers, the shadowy motivations of characters on every side are just as fascinating as the assignments. Since this is the first episode of the season and we’re talking about the title character, it should come as no spoiler to know that the exchange pays off, and Callan does indeed return to England. But that doesn’t mean that anyone’s really happy about how it works out.

Upon his return, Callan is alarmed to discover that he was “buried” in his absence (for official appearances–and underscoring his general expendability). But he’s not surprised to discover that there’s an actual body in the grave. “The Section never had any trouble in finding bodies, did it?” he asks Hunter, bitterly.

“No,” replies his boss, “we’ve been pretty lucky so far.” And thus the show’s trademark cynical tone is successfully re-established for the season to come. The Section will not want for bodies in the months ahead.

Callan’s superiors are left with the sticky task of deciding exactly what to do with their man now that he’s back. For his part, Callan would prefer to quit (which is nothing new for the character), but he’s told in no uncertain terms that that simply isn’t an option. With his usefulness on an operational level gone thanks to the Russians now knowing all about him, it only makes sense to move him up. The promotion to Hunter is the last thing Callan wants, but he’s stuck with it. It’s also the last thing Cross wants, and he does his best to undermine his new superior, but he’s stuck with the situation as well.

Personally, I love the convergence of office politics with state security. When handled in a realistic manner (as it is on Callan or in Queen & Country) and not as an absurd soap opera (24), that combination makes for some of the most compelling spy stories out there. Obviously, I needn’t have worried about the series running out of steam with Callan promoted; he’s now stuck behind a desk he doesn’t want with resentful underlings (including Toby Meres from the monochrome years, who’s been recalled from his assignment in Washington after sitting out the previous season) and equally resentful superiors. The situation in the Section would be a powderkeg even if the security of Britain didn't depend on these people

The mutual resentment felt between Callan and his immediate boss, Bishop (Geoffrey Chater), is quickly evident in the third episode, “First Refusal.” In this classic espionage set-up, a freelance broker is offering to sell SIS a list of ten of its own agents: they get “first refusal” before the names go to the KGB. And to prove it, of course, the seller tips the Russians off to one of the names in advance. Blue-collar Callan assumes the leak must be in London, because no field agent would ever know the names of ten of his colleagues. The aristocratic Bishop takes umbrage at that suggestion:

Callan: Quite obviously the leak is here in London.
Bishop: The SIS? Come, come. It would be very high level for that sort of information. No, no, no, no. Rule that out.
Callan: Have you heard from your friend Kim Philby lately?
Bishop: Callan! That was a gratuitously offensive remark!

Exchanges like that prove why the British Security Services serve as the absolute best backdrop for spy drama: the culture of their intelligence community is so firmly entrenched in the British class system that drama is inherent in every single exchange.

Callan is not well-suited to the job of Hunter for the very reason that he’s also not particularly well-suited to the job of professional killer, despite his knack for it. “What does it say on my file?” he asks the cool-headed Bishop. “Emotionally unstable?”

“‘An excess of subjectivity,’ I believe they called it.”

“Oh yeah, I like that,” says Callan, mulling it over. “What’s it mean when it’s at home?”

“You get too involved. You care.” Bishop spits the word out like it’s the worst thing he could possibly say about someone. Callan cares too much. As a field operative (going all the way back to the series pilot, “A Magnum for Schneider”), he often wanted to know why he was assigned to kill this or that target, and Hunter did his best to keep him in the dark. As Hunter, he quickly discovers that in many cases, prior Hunters were probably just as much in the dark as he was. These orders come from high up–and it was their strength not to ask questions. It may not be Callan’s job to personally carry out the dirty jobs anymore, but it’s his job to plan them... and he still wants to know why. Why is he supposed to arrange the death of this person? Why is he supposed to wage a campaign of harassment against this embassy official? Etcetera. And the answers are no more forthcoming than they were before. It drives him nuts. And he’s not particularly supported by his staff: Meres (the perfectly condescending Valentine) makes no bones about the fact that he has his eye on Callan’s desk, and loose cannon Cross appears to be cracking up–especially after a rash act on his part leaves an innocent girl with permanent brain damage. (That old Callan theme of the suffering of the innocent.)

The fifth episode, “If He Can, So Could I,” is a turning point, not only in this season but in Callan’s life. Someone close to him dies very suddenly, and it’s a real shock to him. (Us, too; the death has no dramatic build-up; it’s not the pay-off to rising suspense; it just happens. So fast you don’t even realize it.) This isn’t an episode that I can reveal too much about, but it builds to a virtuoso monologue by Edward Woodward as a drunk and very angry Callan spills his guts to his only confidant. The episode is a real acting showcase for all concerned, and if Callan were on American TV today, this is the episode that would be sent to Academy voters touting Woodward for an Emmy. It’s no wonder this was one of the two episodes chosen for Woodward to do a commentary track on. The episode is so good that it’s a real surprise that several others in this set manage to top it

“None of Your Business” may be my favorite of the batch, though the competition is stiff. In this one, Callan finds himself persona non grata in the Security Services thanks to his recent actions. He’s suspended of all duties (er, put on “special leave”) and his passport is confiscated. Desperate to leave the country, he sets about finding a suitable forgery through Lonely’s underworld contacts. This quest coincidentally dovetails with an official Section investigation, and soon Callan and Meres find themselves reluctantly working together. Their investigation takes them from the seediest sections of the London underworld to the upper echelons of society, where they track down a ruthless spymaster in a posh bridge club. It’s very Bondian for this series. Meres even wears a tux (I highly doubt that Callan owns one.) Callan is clearly more at home on the other end of the spectrum, and when one of those underworld goons attempts to give him a scare (unaware with whom he’s really dealing), Woodward gets to demonstrate McCall-like utter badassery in his handling of the situation.

Woodward gets to show off more of those balls of steel later on in “I Never Wanted the Job,” when Lonely’s indiscretions force Callan to encounter gangsters once more. It’s great to see Callan and Meres take on the mob (unofficially, of course, and ideally without their superiors finding out). And it’s not just any old London gangsters they’re after, either; it’s wide-lapelled, mustachioed Seventies London gangsters–the very best kind! It’s a terrific little episode with a rather high body count. (All very unofficial, of course.)

As demonstrated earlier with the wounded girl, the high toll of espionage taken on innocent lives is once again a recurring theme in this season of Callan. It’s at the forefront of another excellent episode, “Charlie Says It’s Goodbye.” Callan is assigned to keep a wealthy British economist named Palliser (guest star Dennis Price) from defecting. Palliser is gay and his young lover has gone to Warsaw, where he’s waiting for Palliser to join him. Whether or not the boyfriend is complicit in the ruse is immaterial to the Section; to them it’s an obvious ploy either way by the opposition. As it happens, though, he is not; the young man is just another victim of ongoing secret struggle between East and West. Palliser himself is also a victim, driven by love to betray his country. But there’s another victim in this story, too: a woman named Susan Morris (Beth Harris) who’s a friend of Palliser’s. Callan meets her at a cocktail party where he’s keeping tabs on Palliser and his opposition minders, and Callan takes an instant shine to her. And when Callan likes a woman, well, it’s inevitably bad news for her, because he’s not allowed to be happy. Not only at the behest of the show’s writers, mind you, who certainly prefer keeping their lead character as dour as possible, but also at the behest of Callan’s masters in the Section. Such a romance would be unacceptable.

Susan has already been a victim of the Security Services once before. Her late husband killed himself after allegations of espionage and an official investigation. (A Call For the Dead scenario.) He was later cleared, but it was too late. Therefore, she has a definite aversion to Callan’s job (driven home when she feels his gun press against her as they kiss), but she likes Callan nonetheless. She wants him to quit. She thinks it’s that easy. Callan, of course, knows from bitter experience that it’s not. Susan even hatches a plot to get Callan fired, thinking that then they can be together, but not quite grasping that “fired” has a very specialized meaning within the Section.

You don’t need to be psychic to guess that this episode isn’t going to end well for anybody, but there are thrills in store as well as gloom. There’s a fight that ends with Callan killing someone with a speargun... indoors! It’s kind of awesome... but not to Susan. She witnesses this, and she’s horrified. Callan thinks she’s scared of the guy who was shooting at them and tells her it’s all right now, but she was terrified of him. For those who debate the relative realism of The Sandbaggers and Callan, it would be a valid point to make that no one (to my recollection) ever gets killed with a speargun in Sandbaggers. Then again, this speargun death is certainly not a glamorous, Deadlier Than the Male type of speargun death. It’s gruesome and realistic, the only way a speargun death could be in a series like Callan... or in real life, probably. No one “got the point.” The entire scene–right down to its dreary shot-on-video studio set–plays out as a commentary on that scene in Thunderballwhere James Bond casually shoots Vargas with a speargun in front of Domino. How would Domino react in real life if she saw her new lover murder someone with a spear? Probably like Susan reacts. While all of its practical real world uses are for fishing, the speargun has become an unlikely weapon readily associated with the spy genre, thanks mainly to Ian Fleming (but in no small part to Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina). It turns up in pop culture homages like Yuki 7 and parodies like Archer, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the speargun-as-espionage-trope actually deconstructed before! It’s an incredible sequence, and it typifies Callan’s distinctly un-glamorous approach to violence.

Innocent victims also factor heavily in “The Carrier,” which is another excellent episode–par for the course with this series. This episode focuses on the tenuous relationship between the Security Services and Special Branch. To Callan’s horror, his superior (with Meres’ full complicity) allows two unarmed Special Branch officers to pursue a man they think to be a simple courier, but whom the Section knows to be a deadly KGB assassin. It’s certain death for the police officers (one of whom is a totally green if very eager young woman), but the Section allows it to happen. Callan’s fury when he learns this is palpable, but his masters are playing a longer game than the police, with a loftier objective. To that end, they couldn’t compromise their goal with a simple warning to Special Branch. Once again, completely innocent people are sacrificed to the espionage machine.

The deaths in “The Carrier” are especially bloody, even by Callan’s standards of rather gruesome violence for Seventies television. Yet the reason behind all of this brutal death is a supposedly peaceful one. A British scientist doing defense research is an idealist striving for world peace. To achieve that, he thinks the East and the West should be on equal footing, and arranges to smuggle secrets to a Dutch publisher (really a KGB agent, of course). He’s an idealistic fool, and Callan hates him for that. “You’re not even a real traitor,” he hisses disdainfully, following another round of brutal violence sparked by this idealism.

The Richmond File

Season 4 (and Callan as a series, for that matter) concludes with an intense three-part episode called “The Richmond File.” This is a season of symmetry, and given that symmetry, we see the return of Richmond (T.P. McKenna), the Russian agent Callan was swapped for in the first episode, to wrap things up. Once again underscoring that symmetry, Richmond’s plight is compared to Callan’s own. The men are bitter enemies, but they are also the same.

The first part of “The Richmond File” (subtitled "Call Me Enemy") is written by George Markstein, who served as script editor on The Prisoner before decamping to fill that same role on Callan. The episode, with its rapid-fire, Pinteresque dialogue, plays very much like the second to last episode of The Prisoner, “Once Upon A Time," in that it's just two men in a confined space trying to break each other. (Somewhat ironic, since that was the script, by Patrick McGoohan, that precipitated Markstein's exit from the series!  In fact, he dismissed it as "absolute gibberish."*  Perhaps "Enemy" is how he would have done it...) Callan and Richmond are alone in a safe house in the country, where Callan is trying to figure out if Richmond’s supposed defection is genuine or not. At the same time, Richmond wheedles away at Callan, playing on all of his weaknesses and rivalries. It’s a stage drama for television, with all of the excitement generated by two dazzling performances (particularly Woodward’s slow burn) rather than any actual action. It also reminded me of the safe house scenes in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, but I suppose such comparisons are inevitable given the similar subject matter here. (Though with the roles reversed.)

Other characters from earlier in the season return as well, as the setting moves beyond the house in the second and third episodes of “The Richmond File,” but it remains primarily Woodward’s show–and secondarily McKenna’s, whose role is almost as large. All of James Mitchell’s favorite themes recur, and once more the innocent and the not-so-innocent alike are grinded up on the millstone of the Cold War. “The Richmond File” is also the apex of Callan’s relationship with Lonely. This has been building from the series’ very beginning. Callan is frequently unkind and abusive to the smelly cockney thief, and some of Lonely’s Jar Jar Binks-like acts of stupidity leave the audience wanting to treat him the same way. But Callan is also very protective of Lonely, as he realizes deep down that he’s the only real friend in the world he’s got–the person who keeps Callan sane, who keeps him from losing all humanity like Meres. And that friendship is pretty much the only thing that can save Callan’s soul, a soul he surrendered in the very first episode.

While the character completes his journey in a satisfying manner at the conclusion of “The Richmond File,” physically he’s in as bad a spot as he’s ever been. In fact, he’s pretty much right where he started. Callan ends up in an appropriate situation, but perhaps one offering less definitive closure than some audiences would care for. It’s right for the character, though, and right for the series. It’s been predestined from the very beginning that an upbeat conclusion is not in the cards for David Callan. That it’s not upbeat, however, certainly doesn’t mean the finale isn’t satisfying And, of course, it’s not truly the end of the line for the character, either. Woodward reprised the role two years later in a big-screen feature film, but it was a remake of the pilot episode rather than a continuation of the series. The series did get a continuation many years later in the form of a TV reunion special called “Wet Job” (1981). Sadly, that isn’t included on this set due to rights issues, and I haven’t seen it. According to Edward Woodward himself on one of the commentary tracks here, that might be for the better.

Conclusion

Overall, Season 4 is more serialized than previous seasons, although other than “The Richmond File,” every episode does stand on its own as well. But television drama was starting to become more sophisticated, and several ongoing arcs span the season. While Callan: Set 2 could stand perfectly well on its own seen start-to-finish, I recommend watching Callan: Set 1 first; it will afford the viewer a better appreciation of the characters. Callan is truly amazing television, anchored by a mesmerizing lead performance. I said it when I reviewed Set 1 and I’ll say it again: this is absolutely essential viewing for spy fans. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, it should appeal in equal measure to fans of both the serious and the more action-packed sides of the genre.

Acorn Media’s release of Callan: Set 2 ports over some most welcome extras from Umbrella’s Australian release: two commentary tracks by Edward Woodward. The moderated commentaries (conducted just after the actor had done Hot Fuzz) unfortunately aren’t amazing, but it’s still really great to hear Woodward talk about the series. While there are long dull patches, there are also some great moments that will reward full listening. The tracks are at their best when the moderator leads Woodward off topic from what’s going on on the screen; the actor’s tangents on other episodes and other actors and even other series are all enthralling. Fans of The Equalizer, for example, will also find much of interest in these commentaries. Woodward discusses that series a fair bit, and reveals that the creator told him he was a huge Callan fan and that his series was “based on Callan” and written specifically for Woodward. The actor is quick to point out the differences in the two characters, insisting that McCall is much more educated and clearly of a higher class than Callan, but he acknowledges that the later character wouldn’t exist without the earlier one. Woodward also gives his opinions of “Wet Job” and the Callan film, talks about how Callan began and came to end, and reveals that “Wet Job” was in fact a failed attempt to launch a whole new Callan series. While it would have been interesting to see Callan in the early Eighties, I think it’s just as well that the revival was aborted. The series as it stands is a masterpiece.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but overall Callan: Set 2 is an even better set than Callan: Set 1. Of course, Set 1 is great in its own right, and I wouldn’t recommend skipping it. You’ll want to see everything. After I’d watched the final episode of Callan: Set 2, I immediately suffered remorse that it was all over. Luckily, Network’s release of the never-before-available Callan: The Monochrome Years was just around the corner... and hopefully those episodes will eventually make their way to Region 1 DVD via Acorn as well.

Read my obituary of the great Edward Woodward here.
For a very touching, funny and personal rememberance of the actor,
read Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright's obituary of Woodward here.

Read my review of Acorn's Callan: Set 1 here.
Read Part 1 of my review of Network's Callan: The Monochrome Years here.
...and stay tuned for Part 2 of that review!

*Fairclough, Robert (ed.), The Prisoner: The Original Scripts: Volume 2. London: Reynolds and Hearn, 2006.  p. 371.