Book Review: The Bourne Ultimatum by Robert Ludlum (1990)

Is the hero named Bourne? For all intents and purposes.
Is there an Ultimatum? Hm… Not really, I guess. Sort of. More of a supremacy, but that’s already been used. Still, it’s a great title, so I won’t quibble.

After two fantastic entries (read my reviews here and here) in what ultimately became a trilogy, Robert Ludlum made a rare misstep with the third novel. The Bourne Ultimatum delivers the epic Bourne vs. Carlos payoff audiences have desired ever since the first book (in which American agent David Webb assumed the role of a deadly assassin known as Jason Bourne in order to ensnare the real assassin, Carlos the Jackal), but it fails to maintain the furious energy of the previous books in getting there. Too many coincidences, too much filler, and Ludlum’s weakest conspiracy (so half-baked it doesn’t even really fit in with the rest of the story) doom this final Bourne novel. However, it’s still a chance to spend time with characters we’ve grown to like and in whose fate we’re now invested, and we do—eventually—get a definitive and more or less satisfying conclusion to the plight of David Webb that began a decade earlier in Ludlum’s masterwork, The Bourne Identity. So The Bourne Ultimatum is certainly worth reading for fans of the series who have read the other two novels, but they must be braced for a bit of a letdown, comparatively.

Most of The Bourne Ultimatum’s fatal flaws are tied in with the fact that it’s simply too long. Ludlum’s novels grew longer and longer throughout the Eighties, but were usually so packed with twists and turns and slam-bang action that they generally earned that length. (See: The Bourne Supremacy.) With Ultimatum, however, it feels like he was struggling to equal the page count now expected of him, and augmented a decent central story with superfluous subplots that never entirely gel.

Thirteen years after the events of The Bourne Identity (which was published in 1980, but actually took place a few years earlier), David Webb’s worst fears have come true. Somehow, the Jackal has tracked him down. The assassin knows the identities of Webb’s two closest friends, retired CIA agent Alexander Conklin and Washington-based psychiatrist Dr. Morris Panov. He proves it by luring them to a trap at an amusement park, which makes for a terrific opening to the novel. They get away, but then that was the point. It conveys a message to Webb that will force him to surface: Carlos is close to discovering your true identity, and consequently the identities of your wife and children. (Webb’s wife, Marie, has been a main character in both previous books; their young children are new additions.)

Carlos is a very different character than he was in The Bourne Identity. In that he was truly scary: a believable psychopath charismatic enough to control an army of old men. (Carlos only trusts loyal veteran soldiers who are already close to death anyway.) In The Bourne Ultimatum, he’s a cartoon, a raving lunatic hell-bent on revenge at any cost. He even laughs maniacally as he guns down his own supporters, and if he had a mustache he’d definitely twirl it. I suspect that this change may have come about because Ludlum did not want to risk glorifying the real-life terrorist who formed the basis for his fictional namesake. In a 1986 interview* promoting the second novel in the series, he explained why he hadn’t included Carlos in that book’s plot. The real Jackal (whose life was chronicled in Olivier Ossayas' 2010 miniseries Carlos) was still at large, so he couldn’t have Bourne kill him off. But if he had the assassin escape once again, then he risked adding to his ill-gotten legend rather than tearing it down. By making his Carlos into a ludicrous Bond villain caricature in Ultimatum, the author got to take control of his fact-based creation. This Carlos was so far removed from the real one that Ludlum probably felt less compunction about engineering his demise, and in doing so was very careful not to glorify him at all. If those were the reasons, then they make sense. But they also make the character a far less appealing villain since he’s so ridiculously over the top.

To paraphrase a very complicated plot (and to attempt to make it make more sense than it does in the book), the introverted academic Webb reverts to his Mr. Hyde alter-ego, Jason Bourne, and packs Marie and the kids off to a not-so-secret island retreat they’ve established in the Caribbean so he can flush out the Jackal in America and kill him so as to eliminate the threat to his family. In doing this, he serendipitously stumbles upon a completely unrelated conspiracy involving the remnants of the Vietnam-era Black Ops program from whence he sprang, Medusa. His brilliant plan, in which even the brilliant strategist Conklin sees no flaw, is to shake the tree of this new Medusa so hard that they resort to hiring his old enemy, Carlos, to kill him. Now, Carlos already wants to kill him, so all this really accomplishes is getting a whole new powerful enemy to want him dead at the same time. And I’m not sure why Bourne automatically assumed that Medusa would go to Carlos to make this happen, because… well, in fact, they don’t! Instead they bring in the Mafia, who send their own best hitman after Bourne (apparently just to add to the parties chasing him).

Ludlum’s attempt to link the two plotlines together is just as ill-conceived as his character’s. They never successfully tie in with each other. Even when they finally appear to thanks to a surveillance photo showing Carlos and the leader of Medusa in one place, it turns out that that meeting was merely staged for the camera by a third party entirely ancillary to either storyline. (Don’t worry; I’m not giving anything away because that plot thread goes literally nowhere.) Meanwhile, what Ludlum himself describes as a “French farce” plays out in the Caribbean, involving two old men with similar names arriving on the island in quick succession. Like Bourne’s plan, what ensues there is far too reliant on coincidence—so much so that the author himself freely acknowledges it within the text with that “French farce” comparison!

Some of Ludlum’s more irksome traits as a writer are forgivable in better books, but become painfully annoying in lesser ones like this. As his page count ballooned in the late Eighties and particularly in the Nineties, he developed a tendency of repeating himself ad nauseam. Ludlum was always guilty of that to some degree (though it’s fair to assume that with books that long, readers might need the occasional in-story recap), but in The Bourne Ultimatum it’s simply egregious. Schemes are hatched and then instantly recapitulated. The entire plot to date is frequently summarized for each character not yet privy to all the details—usually after they annoyingly insist upon it.** Even individual sentences are repeated and unnecessarily drawn out at every opportunity. Characters frequently yell at one another that they don’t have time for this, and in doing so make everything take so much longer. And again and again and again, they ask, “What?” Seriously, “what” (in italics) seems like the most used word in this book. (That problem is exacerbated in the audio version by the otherwise unparalleled narrator Scott Brick saying it with the same sharp delivery on each occasion.) And every time someone asks, “What?” you can expect a lengthy recap of whatever was just said along with everything else that’s been said to date in the whole novel. Along those same lines, characters are also always asking for clarification of “spyspeak” and then verbosely berating the characters who used it for doing so—even when, in many cases, the character asking should have known the terminology himself! It all gets old fast. So do repeated or similar phrases.

At one point, Ludlum writes, “Then the impossible happened” and then, “Then the incredible happened” on the same page, before repeating the latter statement verbatim mere paragraphs later. The book could easily be half as long if an editor had simply struck through every repeated piece of information! (Or even a third of them.) Whereas audiences know the Bourne of the movies as a man of few words, the book version (here, anyway) never uses five of them when he can use fifty. Marie even calls him on it at one point, asking, “Why do you use twelve words when one would suffice?” Her husband lamely replies that it’s because he’s an academic… but takes far more words than that to say so. I’m not buying it, Ludlum!

Another Ludlum staple that serves him well in better books but becomes annoying here is the overuse of italicized phrases like, “Madness! It was madness!” and “Then, it happened!” (One of his favorite phrases.) The author has always done that, but in better books, it generally serves his narrative, and even when it doesn’t, it’s easier to overlook. The habit becomes much harder to overlook when it’s done with the regularity it is here.

Like Carlos’ mania, Bourne/Webb’s Jekyll and Hyde syndrome (explored quite wonderfully in The Bourne Supremacy) is also cartoonier here than before, and far more exaggerated. The character doesn’t even seem as sharp as he did previously. How on Earth, for instance, can Bourne not understand how someone else could leave a fake calling card blaming him for an assassination he didn't commit after the same exact thing has already happened in two other books?

To be fair, though, some of Bourne’s slower reactions can be attributed to his feeling his age. The best parts of the novel have to do with Bourne dealing with being 50—thirteen years older than he was in Identity. He no longer has some of those amazing action hero reflexes he was so surprised to discover back then. David Webb makes a point of staying in shape, but even in the best shape it’s not as easy to scale walls and take falls and recover from brutal fights at 50 as it was in his thirties. One of the most intriguing aspects of the Bourne series, to me, is the fact that the character (unlike many other series heroes in this genre, like Ian Fleming’s James Bond) ages in real time. Luckily for Bourne, Carlos has aged as well, and the central story of these two titans attempting to bring to a close a battle for supremacy that’s driven them both since they were much younger men is highly compelling.

There are other good things about The Bourne Ultimatum, too. Conklin’s still a wonderful character, for instance, and his colorful language remains hilarious enough to overlook the fact that black characters are still using the phrase “honkies” in 1990. (Though the best bluish outburst belongs not to Conklin, but to an irate general who berates an underling by calling him a “ball-less scrotum." I’m surprised we don’t hear that one more often!) The gay Mafia capo is a good and unique character, and Panov’s escape attempts after getting captured manage to be both exciting and amusing at once. And man can Ludlum write an action scene! The shootouts and smash-ups remain as compelling as ever.

The book gets better as it goes on, too. Once Bourne’s cross-continental pursuit of Carlos takes him behind the Iron Curtain into the Soviet Union, things are finally firing on all cylinders. The climax, which is the part I remember most vividly from my first time reading this book as a middle schooler, takes place in a KGB training facility in Novgorod where key Western cities (including my own stomping ground of that era, New London, Connecticut) have been recreated in scaled-down versions for the purpose of espionage training. The complex is like a diabolical Epcot Center, and makes a spectacular setting for the finale as Bourne continues to battle Carlos across continents—but all in the span of a few miles now. That epic confrontation alone is worth the cover price. The Bourne Ultimatum definitely has its pluses, but ultimately it’s undone by all those minuses. Reading Ludlum’s better books, it’s very easy to overlook that sort of minuses. But reading a repetitive, overlong work like this one, unfortunately, they all stand out and call too much attention to themselves. Still, by its final page, The Bourne Ultimatum has at least brought the story of Jason Bourne (aka David Webb) to a fairly satisfying conclusion.

Of course, that wasn’t totally the conclusion. The author’s estate elected to hire Eric van Lustbader to continue the series, and he’s since penned way more Bourne novels than the character’s creator ever did. I’m not sure why. Unlike James Bond, whose job entails one new assignment after another, thus lending the series to continuation, Bourne doesn’t scream out for more novels after Ultimatum. His story is complete. Lustbader might write terrific thrillers about the character for all I know, but personally I have no interest in finding out. It would stretch credulity too much to have this former fake assassin lured back into the game he despises again and again and again. Furthermore, from what I gather, Lustbader eschewed many of my favorite aspects of Ludlum’s series. I know he quickly killed off the best characters, and I suspect he did away with the compelling real-time aging. (If not, then his latest book would focus on a seventy-something assassin, and that seems unlikely.) Ludlum may not have nailed the final volume, but he told a complete story in his Bourne trilogy and as a reader I’m quite satisfied to leave it at that.

*"Ludlum on Ludlum"
**In the same 1986 interview, Ludlum quite soundly sang the virtues of heavy rewriting, adding that he tried to clarify everything in his labyrinthine plots further with each rewrite. That’s very practical… but it seems that by the time of The Bourne Ultimatum, he was over-clarifying. 

The Ludlum Dossier
Read my book review of The Parsifal Mosaic (1982) here.
Read my DVD review of The Holcroft Covenant (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Janson Directive (2002) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Supremacy (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Holcroft Covenant (1978) here.
Read my book review of The Sigma Protocol (2001) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Identity (1980) here.

Tradecraft: Ed Skrein Replaces Jason Statham in Transporter 4

For a franchise built solely around its original star (well, and his car), the Transporter series (first of EuropaCorp's many neo-Eurospy franchises and movies) has spawned a surprisingly high number of Frank Martins. After Simon Vance already stepped into the role originated by Jason Statham for the Transporter TV series (which is currently in production on its second season, and set to air this fall on TNT), Variety reports that Ed Skrein will take over the role in the film series beginning with Transporter 4. Skrein had a supporting role in The Sweeney in 2012, and that same year starred in his Sweeney co-star Ben Drew's directorial debut, Ill Manors. He played a recurring role on The Tunnel (the UK version of The Bridge), but he's probably best known to American audiences (if he's known at all) from his recurring role as mercenary Daario Naharis on Game of Thrones. (However, he's been replaced by another actor for Season 4.) He's 30 years old, roughly fifteen years Statham's junior. Word has it that Transporter 4 will be something of a prequel, focusing on a younger Frank Martin before he became the man we know from the Statham movies. (Does that mean he won't have established his rules yet? Or will we see him in his Special Forces days, before he even went private to start transporting?) Variety uses the term "reboot." The new movies are not expected to be related to the TV show.

EuropaCorp CEO Christophe Lambert told the trade that the new film (first in a projected trilogy co-produced with China's Fundamental Films) will return Frank to the French Riviera, setting of the first movie (and some of the TV series). He said the writers Bill Collage and Adam Cooper (Tower Heist, Exodus) have "given more depth to the character of Frank Martin." To that end this film will explore his relationship with his father, for whom they're looking for a prominent actor. This will mark the first entry in the series not written by Robert Mark Kamen and EuropaCorp co-founder Luc Besson (also the team responsible for the Taken movies). The trade reports that Camille Delamarre, who edited EuropaCorp's Transporter 3, Taken 2, Colombiana and Lockout, directed second unit on the Transporter series, and made his feature directing debut on Brick Mansions, the company's upcoming English language remake of their French hit District B13, will helm all three new Transporter movies. So far, an American distributor hasn't yet been lined up. (Fox distributed the first two movies, Lionsgate the third.)

Hm. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I'm excited that there will be new Transporter movies, but I really wish they had just stuck with Jason Statham! He is fantastic in that role. I'm also sorry that Besson and Kamen won't be writing it, but I guess every writer probably has only so many stories in him about a guy driving something from one place to another. The injection of fresh blood into the series is kind of exciting, and I hope that the modest $30 million budget (down from Transporter 3's estimated $65 million) will inspire Delamarre to take the series to new levels of practical lunacy. I just hope that "reboot" doesn't automatically mean turning the series darker, as it has for other series. I enjoy these movies for their completely preposterous, totally daffy action, and their tone akin to Roger Moore Bond movies.

Read my review of Transporter 3 here.

TNT's Agent X Adds to Cast

A few weeks ago we learned that Sharon Stone would topline TNT's spy pilot Agent X playing a newly minted U.S. Vice President who discovers that her job comes with a top secret sideline: protecting the Constitution in times of great crisis with the aid of her Chief Steward and a secret operative designated 'Agent X.' Now the cable network has rounded out the cast, filling the other leads—some with notable spy veterans. According to Deadline, Jeff Hephner (Chicago Fire) will play the title role of John Case, codenamed Agent X. Gerald McRaney (who even managed to be awesome in the lackluster Undercovers, his last spy series) will play Malcolm Millar, "the refined Chief Steward of the Vice President’s mansion, and keeper of its many secrets." (Her Alfred?) Homeland's Jamey Sheridan will play FBI Director Stanton, who's described as "patronizing and disdainful" towards the VP. (Perhaps he's just resentful, since he himself held that office on his last spy show.) The trade blog also reports that Mike Colter (Zero Dark Thirty, Salt) will play the Speaker of the House, tasked with oversight of the ultra secretive Agent X project, and (in a separate story) that Peter O'Fallon (Leverage, House) will direct the pilot.

Los Angeles Spy Fans: A Rare Opportunity to See Never Say Never Again on the Big Screen This Week!

Attention Los Angeles area spy fans! This week marks a very rare opportunity to see Sean Connery's 1983 return to the role that made him famous on the big screen. It's not often you'll have this opportunity. I'd hazard that thanks to this city's robust revival circuit (there are at least five full-time theaters dedicated to playing older movies in town, not to mention universities and special screenings), L.A. affords cineastes more chances to watch old movies projected in 35mm (or, more and more commonly now, in DCPs) on the big screen than just about any other city in the world. Yet, in the fourteen years that I've lived here, this is the first time that Never Say Never Again has ever screened at one of those revival houses. For comparison, I'd estimate that every other James Bond film (including that other black sheep of the series, the 1967 Casino Royale) has played at least twice in all that time. The vast majority of them have been shown many more times than that, and Connery's earlier entries average about once a year. (Less often for You Only Live Twice, sadly, but more often for Goldfinger, so they even out.) But, let me repeat, Never Say Never Again has never screened here in at least the last decade and a half. That makes this week's showing at the New Beverly Cinema roughly the cinematic equivalent of a first edition of Casino Royale for its obscurity. (Okay, maybe not quite that rare, but damn close!) So if you're a Bond fan, even if you don't rate that rogue entry particularly highly, I definitely recommend making a trip out in the next three days to see this elusive unicorn of a Bond film.

Personally, I really like Never Say Never Again a lot. Sure, the plot is a rehash of Thunderball; (but let's face it: that can actually be said of quite a lot of movies over the years!) sure, it may not have the Bond Theme for legal reasons, and sure, there are unfamiliar staff holding down the fort at MI6 (though I get a huge kick out of Edward Fox's quarrelsome M and Alec McCowen's cockney Q), but it does have SEAN CONNERY back in the role he had abandoned twelve years prior—and looking fitter and more interested than he did in his last official picture (Diamond Are Forever, which is also on the docket at the New Bev)! And it's got Barbara Carrera as one of the best (and best costumed) Bond villainesses ever (and a virtual prototype for Xenia Onatopp, another contender for that crown), Klaus Maria Brandauer as a superbly unhinged villain, Bernie Casey as a terrific Felix Leiter, and stellar cinematography (all the better in glorious 35mm!) by the man who shot Raiders of the Lost Ark, Douglas Slocombe! And it's got the immortal line, "I wouldn't know. I've never lost." (Old spy hands Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, writers of one of my favorite spy send-ups, Otley, did an uncredited dialogue pass on the script, and the dialogue generally sparkles.) Yeah, I really love it.

It was also my own frustrating White Whale for a long time in one intangible, experiential aspect of my personal Bond collection: collecting big screen viewings. My first cinematic Bond experience as a kid was Licence to Kill, but over my years living in Los Angeles I managed eventually to rack up all the others in theatrical screenings. (Most far more than once.) But Never Say Never Again eluded me until 2012, when it played in New York while I just happened to be visiting that city. Unfortunately, I took the wrong train, and ended up missing the first half of the film. So I've only seen half of it in a theater to date, and that doesn't really count. Hence, I'm looking forward to striking it off my list tonight and completing my virtual "collection"... and then probably seeing it once more for good measure on Monday or Tuesday.

As I mentioned above, Never Say Never Again isn't playing alone. It's on a double feature bill along with Diamonds Are Forever (nowhere near as rare, but also not among the more commonly screened Connerys), so for one low price you can see Sean Connery's last two Bond movies at the New Beverly Cinema February 15 through the 18th. (Yeah, I'm a day late in getting the word out here, but you've still got three chances!) Both titles are screening in 35mm (as do all movies at that wonderful theater), which I'll take over a DCP any day of the week. Tickets are $8 (what a bargain for two Bond flicks!) and can be purchased at the door or online here. On Sunday, Diamonds Are Forever starts at 5:10pm and Never Say Never Again at 7:30, and on Monday and Tuesday Diamonds Are Forever plays at 7:30 with Never Say Never Again beginning at 9:50. Make the trip! It will be well worth it. (Also, while there's no guarantee, the New Beverly usually programs thematically related vintage trailers with their double features, so hopefully we'll get a taste of some other Bond and spy films, too.)

Incidentally, in other Never Say Never Again news (and more helpful news for people who don't happen to live withing driving distance of Los Angeles), the Blu-ray, which has been out of print for some time and was commanding prohibitively steep prices last year, has recently come back into stock at Amazon through third part sellers for reasonable prices. I don't know if this actually means that it's back in print (doubtful), or just that someone uncovered some unsold stock. In any case, if you don't own it already on Blu-ray (and it's a shockingly good high-def transfer for a film EON would rather MGM bury somewhere and forget), you might want to grab it now while the grabbing is good, because in a few months the supply might dwindle and it might go back to being a $60 disc.

Tradecraft: BBC Two Picks Up Tom Rob Smith Series London Spy

Deadline reports that BBC Two has picked up London Spy, a new 5-part espionage drama from Tom Rob Smith, bestselling author of Child 44, for which he won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award in 2008. According to the trade, London Spy focuses on "an innocent young man drawn into a dangerous world of espionage." Here's the official synopsis from BBC:

In the center of London is a street with the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service on one side and the headquarters of gay clubbing on the other. London Spy is the story of a chance romance between two people from opposite sides of that street.
Danny - gregarious, hedonistic, romantic and adrift, falls for the anti-social enigmatic and brilliant Alex. Just as the two of them realise that they're perfect for each other, Alex disappears.
Danny, utterly ill-equipped to take on the complex and codified world of British espionage, must decide whether he's prepared to fight for the truth.

Deadline reports that the series will shoot this year and air in 2015. No U.S. broadcaster has been announced yet. Smith is producing; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner executive produce for Working Title Television along with Juliette Howell, and Polly Hill exec produces for BBC Two. Hill added to the synopsis, saying, "This is a beautifully written love story, caught up in a spy thriller – a wonderfully complex and surprising story, of one man’s search for the truth.” Sounds great to me! I love that we're in the midst of a spy renaissance on British TV (particularly on the various BBC channels), what with this, Legacy (which has already aired in Britain), the previously announced Page Eight sequels, The Honourable Woman, and the especially intriguing Brian Cox series The Game, among others. (Not to mention the in-the-works adaptation of Len Deighton's Samson novels!) It's like the late Seventies all over again! I also particularly love the title London Spy.

While this is his first contemporary spy story, Tom Rob Smith is certainly no stranger to the genre. Child 44 (which is being adapted into a film by Safe House director Daniel Espinosa starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Noomi Rapace) is the first book in a successful and acclaimed trilogy of decades-spanning Cold War novels about KGB agent Leo Demidov. The other two are The Secret Speech and Agent 6.

Valentine's Day Book Review: The Parsifal Mosaic by Robert Ludlum (1982)

Is the hero named Parsifal? Nope. It is, however, a codename given to the unknown enemy, with a tenuous connection to the Wagner opera.

Is there a Mosaic? Well, not literally, no, but in the same metaphorical way there is in all of Ludlum’s conspiracy novels. Who cares? It’s a great title!

The Parsifal Mosaic may be the ultimate break-up novel—at least within the spy genre. Basically, it’s about a guy, Michael Havelock, who makes a really, really bad mistake in his relationship (he believes evidence that supposedly proves his girlfriend, Jena Karas, is a Russian spy), breaks it off in the worst way imaginable (he, um, tries to have her killed—and even believes he succeeds), and then realizes he can’t live without her. After his first attempt at a rebound goes typically awry (he ends up getting a KGB recruitment offer at gunpoint instead of the one-night stand he expected), Havelock sees the error of his ways and spends the first half of the book trying to get Jena to just so much as speak to him again (the problem is now she wants to kill him, too... rather understandably), let alone realize that they’re right for one another. He knows he messed up, and he wants to apologize to her for that, and give her everything he should have given her to begin with. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of people who want to see them both dead, which makes all of his efforts at reconciliation considerably more difficult. But that doesn’t stop Havelock from pursuing his elusive former love all over the world (from Madrid to Rome to Paris to New York and beyond), fighting all sorts of adversaries, and getting to the bottom of a vast global conspiracy along the way. (Would it be Ludlum without a vast global conspiracy?)

Havelock is an agent of Consular Operations, the fictitious intelligence branch of the U.S. State Department that features in many of Ludlum’s novels. (I suspect its creation came about because the author, in the post-Watergate, post-Church Committee 1970s, couldn’t stomach making a CIA agent a hero in The Matarese Circle.) Or rather, as the novel opens, he’s a former agent, having turned in his resignation following the messy operation that resulted in the supposed death of his lover. He watched it play out, too, observing on a beach on Spain’s Costa Brava as Jena was gunned down by members of the Red Brigade, per his own elaborate set-up. It was more than he could handle. He resigned, and now he’s wandering around Europe, visiting all the places where he previously operated (with her), but never got to enjoy as a tourist. Then, one day at a train station in Rome, he sees Jena. Alive. He tries to go after her, but she flees. This sets into motion his relentless pursuit, which in turn sets agents of various intelligence agencies (as well as freelancers) on his trail. Everyone realizes that he’s now back in the game, but no one’s sure who he’s working for. Neither the Russians nor the Americans can afford to let him live, and he finds himself cut off from his greatest resource back in the States—his mentor, hailed the world over as a “great man,” the Kissinger-like, Czech-born, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing Secretary of State Anton Mathias. Ludlum had a great distrust for the self-proclaimed “best and brightest,” so anyone identified as a “great man” comes under instant suspicion, but Mathias’s story takes some interesting twists and turns and doesn’t necessarily lead where seasoned Ludlumites might expect.

Meanwhile, there is a Soviet mole somewhere at the heart of the American government, close to Mathias and close to the President. This really messes things up for Havelock, because the mole believes that Havelock’s relentless pursuit of Jena may lead to his or her exposure. So even if Havelock can convince someone in the U.S. government that he hasn’t switched sides, the mole is still in a position to call the shots and send American-backed hit squads in his direction.

I first read The Parsifal Mosaic, like most Ludlum novels, when I was in middle school, and I’ve remembered it ever since as being one of the author’s best. After revisiting it recently (via Audible audiobook), I now realize that those impressions must have been based largely on the thick novel’s first half, which is as gripping and exciting as anything Ludlum’s ever written. Unfortunately, the story loses some of that momentum when Havelock and Jena are reunited about halfway through—too soon when it was the prospect of that reunion that was driving the story. The focus in the second half shifts to the wider conspiracy that Michael’s pursuit of Jena has uncovered. The nature of this conspiracy (a mosaic which ensnares the President, the mole and the Secretary of State among others) is highly creative, but unfortunately the untangling of it mainly involves Havelock and Jena, thus far the book’s protagonists, holed up in a safe house making phone calls while others do the legwork. (Though regular Ludlum readers know that in his world, “safe houses” are usually anything but.) The unrestrained force that propelled the novel through its breakneck first half is lost a bit in the second. Overall, The Parsifal Mosaic is definitely a good read (and an essential one for the author’s fans), but not quite in a league with Ludlum’s best, like The Bourne Identity or The Chancellor Manuscript. Still, the set-up is there for it to make a truly fantastic movie, and I'd love to see that happen! (Chinese director Zhang Yimou just signed on to direct an adaptation for Universal.)

The Audible edition is read by Scott Brick, one of the most reliable narrators in the business, and like all of his Ludlum readings it’s first-rate—with one glaring caveat. This may just be a personal issue, but my frame of reference when I first read this book for the name “Havelock” was the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only. Therefore, the hero’s name has been locked in my head for years as the name is pronounced in the film—“have a lock.” But Brick drops the middle syllable, pronouncing it “have lock” throughout his narration. That drove me nuts. But on all other fronts, he does his usual, excellent job! Overall, I find the audio versions a fantastic way to revisit the works of Robert Ludlum and a great way to kill time in Los Angeles traffic. I highly recommend an Audible membership.

The Ludlum Dossier
Read my DVD review of The Holcroft Covenant (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Janson Directive (2002) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Supremacy (1986) here.
Read my book review of The Holcroft Covenant (1978) here.
Read my book review of The Bourne Identity (1980) here.
Read my book review of The Sigma Protocol (2001) here.

Tradecraft: Zhang Yimou to Direct Robert Ludlum's The Parsifal Mosaic for Producer Ron Howard

Wow! Just... wow. This is incredibly exciting news. Deadline reports that not only is the long dormant Robert Ludlum adaptation The Parsifal Mosaic once again happening, but acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou  (Raise the Red Lantern) is now at the helm in his Hollywood debut. Ron Howard, who was previously attached to direct back in 2009, will produce the film along with his Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer and Captivate Entertainment's Jeffrey Weiner and Ben Smith. (In 2008, producer Frank Marshall and writer George Nolfi briefly considered adapting The Parsifal Mosaic into the basis for the next Bourne movie. That didn't happen.) Zhang's Raise the Red Lantern was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991. In the last decade, he's demonstrated his action acumen with historical martial arts epics like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. He's taken surprising detours before, like remaking the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple as A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop in 2009. But I don't think anyone expected him to sign onto a Robert Ludlum movie in Hollywood! It's unexpected... but I think the results could potentially be amazing. I can't wait to see! The trade adds that this is the first time a mainland Chinese director has ever signed to make an English language film with an American studio. David Self (Road to Perdition, Thirteen Days) penned the most recent draft of the script for Howard, but it will now undergo another rewrite with Zhang's input.

Ludlum's 1982 novel, considered by many to be one of his best, centers on an Michael Havelok, an American spy drawn out of a voluntary retirement when he sees Jena Karas, the woman he had loved and long believed dead, very much alive. But that's not necessarily a good thing when she was an enemy agent, and he was the reluctant engineer of her death! What follows is the most interesting romance Ludlum ever concocted, a truly twisted tale of myriad betrayals both personal and political. Boy meets girl, girl betrays boy, boy has girl killed, girl comes back to life, girl tries to kill boy... it's the ultimate post-break-up story, perfect for Valentine's Day! How do you tell the ex- you thought you'd killed how badly you want her back? Ludlum's tale was set against a Cold War backdrop and made excellent use of the author's regular European stomping grounds. With Zhang's involvement, I can't help but speculate (without any legitimate grounds to do so) if the updated version might be relocated to the Far East with the Jena character changed from a Russian agent to a Chinese agent? Doubtless Universal wouldn't want to risk alienating the massive Chinese audience by vilifying the Chinese government (and nor would China allow Zhang to direct such a movie), but it's no spoiler to reveal that the true villains of Ludlum's book were not acting on behalf of any government, but fanatical elements within the U.S. and Soviet elite. That scenario would work. To expand this pure speculation to its logical next step, it occurs to me that the actress Zhang Ziyi, who starred in Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers and Hero, would make an excellent Chinese Jena...

Read my review of Ludlum's The Parsifal Mosaic here.

Spy Character Posters for Captain America: The Winter Soldier

While we have yet to get a full-on Marvel spy movie, their secret agent characters do seem to get heroic individual character posters a lot. (We've seen them previously for Iron Man 2 and Marvel's The Avengers.) Today Yahoo! (via Coming Soon) revealed two such posters for April's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. superspies Black Widow and Nick Fury (Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively). Directors Joe and Anthony Russo have promised that The Winter Soldier (based at least loosely on a terrific comic book story by Ed Brubaker) will be a "political thriller" in the vein of Seventies spy classics like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View. And in keeping with that theme, Condor star Robert Redford plays a S.H.I.E.L.D. honcho in the film. The question remains, though: when will Black Widow get her own film??? It's about time Marvel offered a solo female film hero, and that Emma Peel-inspired character would lend herself well to a full-blown Bondian spy adventure. Furthermore, Marvel has just started publishing a new ongoing Black Widow comic book series by Nathan Edmondson and the great Phil Noto (again, about time!), so the timing seems right...

Read my "S.H.I.E.L.D. Primer" here, with suggestions of good comic book collections to introduce yourself to Black Widow and Nick Fury.

Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond Premieres Tonight on BBC America

The Sky/BBC America co-production Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond premieres tonight on BBC America at 10pm Eastern. The four-part miniseries first announced a year ago stars Dominic Cooper (Captain America, Agent Carter) as 007 creator Ian Fleming, focusing on his wartime exploits in Naval Intelligence. John Pearson, author of The Life of Ian Fleming, serves as a consultant on the miniseries, which is written by John Brownlow (who previously chronicled the life of another famous 20th century author in Sylvia, which co-starred Daniel Craig) and Don Macpherson (who penned the 1998 feature film version of The Avengers, but shouldn't be blamed for the end result, as his original script was, in my opinion, quite a good tribute to that classic spy series). Mat Whitecross (who helmed the odd Spooks/MI-5 spinoff Spooks: Code 9) directs. Rupert Evans (Hellboy) plays Peter Fleming; Lara Pulver (Sherlock) plays Ian's future wife Ann, and Samuel West (Cambridge Spies) plays Fleming's Naval Intelligence boss Admiral Godfrey.

Fleming's life story was previously covered in two 90s telefilms, Goldeneye (starring a perfectly cast Charles Dance) and Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (starring Jason Connery), as well as in 2005's Ian Fleming: Bondmaker, starring Ben Daniels. In supporting roles, Tobias Menzies played Fleming in Any Human Heart (2010), James D'Arcy played him in Age of Heroes (2011), and Jeremy Crutchley played him in an episode of Marple scripted by Young Bond author Charlie Higson.

Watch the BBC America trailer for Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond or the intriguing Sky trailer (which makes excellent use of the fantastic AwayTEAM remix of Shirley Bassey's "Where Do I Begin" from the Bassey remix album) below. Or watch a very promising making-of featurette (better than either of the trailers) here.

Tradecraft: Transporter TV Series Finally Comes to America

Deadline reports that the Transporter TV series is finally coming to America! TNT has acquired the first season of the Chris Vance series based on Luc Besson's neo-Eurospy Jason Statham film trilogy, along with the upcoming, retooled second season. The first season aired in many countries around the world last year, and is already widely available on Region 2 DVD and region-free Blu-Ray in foreign markets. (I broke down and imported a Region 4 set from Australia last year since it looked unlikely to air here.) We've been hearing about a Transporter TV series since way back in 2009; it was officially greenlit in late 2010, and in early 2011 it was reported that Cinemax would partner with EuropaCorp to air the series in the United States. Later that year Vance (best known to spy fans from an arc on Burn Notice) was tapped to star as Frank Martin, the role originated by Statham, and subsequently joined by Andrea Osvárt as his handler, Carla, a former CIA operative and a character who didn't appear in the theatrical films. François Berléand signed on to reprise his role from the films as Inspector Tarconi, Martin's friend and occasional fishing partner, and Delphine Chanéac (the 2006 Pink Panther) and Rachel Skarsten (Birds of Prey) rounded out the cast as, respectively, Olivia, a reporter tracking Martin’s work, and Delia, the mysterious daughter of a man from Martin’s past. That fall, the trouble started, with the original showrunners departing over creative differences. Before the first season's twelve episodes would wrap, their replacement would also ankle, and production would shut down when Vance was sidelined with an injury. The first trailer came out in the summer of 2012, heralding airdates in Europe and elsewhere, but another year went by with still no announcement of a Cinemax premiere. In August of last year it was announced that the cable network had backed out, and the show's international producers were seeking a new U.S. partner. Undaunted by all these setbacks, they were still pressing forward with a second season, and had tapped a heavy hitter to oversee a retooling: X-Files vet Frank Spotnitz, who had shepherded two hit international action co-productions on Cinemax, Hunted and the first American season of Strike Back. Vance's option had expired, but was being renegotiated. Apparently that's happened, because Deadline reports that production on the second season will begin at the end of February, shooting in Canada, Morocco and the Czech Republic. TNT (where Vance is a familiar face from a recurring role on Rizzoli & Isles) is on board to air both seasons.

The first season of Transporter was a bit of a mixed bag (perhaps not surprising, given its difficult production history), with iffy plots and occasionally sub-par acting offset by some truly incredible car chases and stunt sequences, high production values, and spectacular locations. While the movies were rated PG-13, the TV show was designed for Cinemax, and therefore featured copious nudity and occasionally brutal violence. Obviously, that will have to be trimmed for a TNT audience. (Apparently a sanitized version was already aired in some territories.) But honestly, its unabashed grindhouse sleaze appeal was part of the charm of the show, and I hope it doesn't lose that in the cutting process. At any rate, I'm happy that the series will continue, and that it finally has a U.S. network home!

While Besson's EuropaCorp licensed the property out to another production outfit, Atlantique, for television, that hasn't stopped them from pressing forward in the meantime with further feature films. Last year it was announced that EuropaCorp had struck a deal with China's Fundamental Films to co-produce not one but three more entries in the theatrical series. Still unknown is whether those films, which will be set at least partially in China, will star Statham, Vance or another actor altogether. Personally, I'm rooting for Statham, who last played the part in 2008's Transporter 3 (review here), to return to the role that really put him on the map as an action star. But until that happens, Chris Vance is not a bad television substitute.

Tradecraft: TNT Snags Sharon Stone for Spy Drama Agent X

TNT is packing serious star power into their spy shows. They've already got Legends percolating with Sean Bean (watch the trailer here), and now they've tapped Sharon Stone to star in a pilot from Bourne Identity co-writer William Blake Herron provisionally entitled Agent X. While she's made some memorable guest appearances over the years (I loved her turn on Magnum!), this marks Stone's first TV series commitment since Bay City Blues in 1983. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the spy drama follows a mysterious secret agent "who works to protect the country and its citizens from all manner of threats by any means necessary in times of extreme crisis when traditional law and government aren't in a position to help ... deployed only at the careful discretion of the vice president." (I love the shades of late period Mission: Impossible!) Stone will play America's first female VP, Natalie Maccabee, who "soon learns that [her new job] comes with a top-secret duty: protecting the Constitution in times of great crisis with the aid of her Chief Steward and a secret operative designated 'Agent X.'" Apparently this secret duty was conceived by the founding fathers and kept secret for hundreds of years. The trade aptly describes the premise as "National Treasure meets The Bourne Identity." Well, I'm intrigued!

Tradecraft: Millers Director Boards Ed Helms Spy Comedy

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed last summer's hit comedy We're the Millers, will direct the Ed Helms spy comedy Central Intelligence. Thurber (who demonstrated his action chops when he penned a surprisingly good unmade Magnum PI feature a decade ago) will also rewrite the script.

Sean Bean in Legends Trailer

Somehow I missed this, but a trailer came out last year for TNT's 2014 Sean Bean spy series Legends, from Homeland and 24 executive producer Howard Gordon. We've been following this for quite a while (since it was first developed for NBC in 2010, and then when it got a new lease on life at TNT in 2012, when Brenden Fraser was first set to star, then dropped out opening the way for the infinitely preferable ex-Bond baddie Bean), and it will finally reach our TV screens this summer. This trailer looks quite promising (as expected), though I'm disappointed to read in the network's official description of the show that Bean's deep-cover agent Martin Odum has been changed from a former CIA agent in Robert Littell's novel to an FBI agent on the show. I guess they wanted to keep costs down by sticking to domestic flashback locations? Oh well; it still looks cool!

Thanks to Ava for calling my attention to this!

Tradecraft: Aronofsky Abandons Red Sparrow

According to The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision (via Dark Horizons), Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) has opted not to direct the spy movie he'd been flirting with, Red Sparrow, based on the novel by Jason Matthews. This is too bad. Not only am I a big fan of the director who was looking forward to seeing what an Aronofsky spy movie would look like, but I'm also a fan of the book, and eager to see it become a movie. Luckily, the trade blog adds that "Fox is still high on the project, which it picked up in a seven-figure deal in April 2013 for Steve Zaillian and Garrett Basch of Film Rites and Peter Chernin of Chernin to produce." So hopefully the project will continue to move forward even without Aronofsky. There's even a chance, according to Heat Vision, that the studio could re-approach Aronofsky in the future once it has a viable script. For now, they'll focus on hiring a screenwriter. (Hand goes up.)

I enthusiastically recommend the novel Red Sparrow. Matthews spent a whole career in the CIA before turning his hand to fiction, and his book benefits from all of his experience, dripping with apparent verisimilitude. The characters are rich, and the locations exactly what I want from a good spy yarn, jumping the globe from Moscow to Helsinki to Washington to New London to Rome and beyond. There are moles and double agents and betrayals and tradecraft aplenty. There is also, in the proud tradition of Ian Fleming, lots of good food consumed, and in a neat gimmick unlikely to be included in the film, Matthews provides a recipe at the end of each chapter for one of the dishes discussed. It's a two-hander between Russian SVR agent Dominika Egorova and CIA golden boy Nate Nash (yes, it sounds like a name concocted by Stan Lee), but Dominika is the juiciest part. With Aronofsky on board, I previously speculated that he might reteam with his Black Swan star Natalie Portman (who would definitely be good in the role), but perhaps without him the door will be left open for former Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko. I actually pictured Kurylenko in the role as I read the book. I just hope the project continues to move forward.

Tradecraft: ABC Pulls The Assets

In some particularly discouraging news, Deadline reports that that ABC has pulled their fact-based Cold War miniseries The Assets after just two airings. It's disturbing because after a shaky but promising premiere, The Assets had really come into its own with the strong second episode. (It's somewhat tempting to compare the network to the notorious CIA traitor Aldrich Ames, focus of the miniseries, as they have both now killed The Assets.) I had hoped that an eight episode miniseries would run its course no matter what, but ratings went from dismal to... well, according to the trade blog, the worst... ever. In the history of network television. Even the normally cynical Deadline jumped to its defense, however, pointing out that the miniseries (which was slotted into the highly competitive Thursday night 10pm slot while the top-rated Scandal was on hiatus) had no stars (well, no American stars anyway) and received no marketing push from the network. There's no word yet on whether the remaining six episodes will be burnt off on Saturday nights or made available On Demand or on the network's website (where you can currently watch the first two) or what. While the upshot of the mole hunt to expose Ames is a matter of historical record, I still hope to see the rest of The Assets! In the first episode, Ames seemed so obviously a traitor that it was difficult to foresee how it would take eight episodes and nearly a decade to catch him. (Sadly, by most accounts, that's a fairly accurate portrayal, and blame lies with the CIA and not the writers.) But in Episode 2, the story expanded to include the hunts for other moles of that era (who served as a smoke screen for Ames), and Episode 3 promised us the race to catch Edward Lee Howard. Additionally, the choice to focus on the Russian CIA assets Ames exposed to the KGB looked set to provide lots of meaty material for those remaining six hours. I liked what I saw enough that I'm still hoping for an eventual DVD release, because I would like to have The Assets on my shelf.

Tradecraft: Cold War Spy Thriller The Game Coming to BBC America

Americans, too, will get to see The Game, BBC One's previously announced Seventies-set spy series from Being Human creator Toby Whithouse (who also penned one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, "School Reunion")! Deadline reports that BBC America will air the six-episode Cold War series in the fall. (As far as I know BBC One has not yet announced a UK airdate.) The Game stars Brian Cox (The Bourne Supremacy, RED) as the Smiley-esque spymaster "Daddy," along with Tom Hughes (Page Eight), Paul Ritter (Quantum of Solace), Shaun Dooley (The Woman in Black), Chloe Pirrie (Black Mirror), Victoria Hamilton (What Remains), Jonathan Aris (James Bond videogames) and Judy Parfitt (The Avengers) as his team of MI5 spycatchers. In the Mission: Impossible tradition, each team member has a unique specialty. The Game will straddle the worlds of episodic and serial television by following an overall mission to expose the mysterious Soviet-backed "Operation Glass" being run against Britain, but focusing each week on taking down a single Russian operative playing a part in the larger operation. It sounds like a throwback in the vein of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Mr. Palfrey of Westminster, and I can't wait to see it!

3 Days to Kill Poster and Photo

Kevin Costner hasn't spied since No Way Out way back in 1987 at the height of his career. But in the first two months of 2014 alone, he'll be seen in two new high-profile spy movies! First up, he mentors a young Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, out this month. (Costner himself was offered the Ryan role in The Hunt For Red October, but turned it down to make Dances With Wolves.) Then, next month, he toplines 3 Days to Kill, the latest neo-Eurospy offering from Luc Besson's EuropaCorp in a bid for the same sort of late career action revival that worked so well for Liam Neeson after the success of Taken, but eluded John Travolta following the disappointing U.S. box office of From Paris With Love (a movie I found quite entertaining). Will Costner's effort succeed? Personally, I'm rooting for him! I've always liked him, and I tend to love Besson's neo-Eurospy actioners. 3 Days to Kill is written by Besson and Adi Hasak, the same team behind From Paris With Love. McG (Charlie's Angels, This Means War) directs, and Amber Heard (Paranoia, Machete Kills), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Connie Nielson (Gladiator) co-star. Here's the official plot summary, and the first official photo:

In this heart pounding action-thriller, Kevin Costner is a dangerous international spy who is determined to give up his high stakes life to finally build a closer relationship with his estranged wife and daughter, whom he's previously kept at arm's length to keep out of danger. But first, he must complete one last mission - even if it means juggling the two toughest assignments yet: hunting down the world's most ruthless terrorist and looking after his teenage daughter for the first time in ten years, while his wife is out of town.

3 Days to Kill opens February 21.

True Lies Anniversary Blu-ray On the Way

Even though James Cameron has made the two highest grossing movies of all time, both for Fox, the studio has shown very little love on home video for his 1994 spy movie True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger with Jamie Lee Curtis, Tia Carrere, Eliza Dushku, Charlton Heston, Art Malick, Bill Paxton and Tom Arnold. It's never been on Blu-ray in the U.S., and the existing DVD is so bare-bones that it proudly boasts as it's sole "special" feature "Original Theatrical Trailer." But that's set to change in 2014 for the movie's 20th anniversary, when, according to The Digital Bits, the studio plans to release a special edition Blu-ray. Although we're still awaiting an official announcement from Fox, co-star Tom Arnold recently confirmed that he and the rest of the cast shot new interview material for the release. True Lies has never been among my favorite Bond rip-offs, but I admit I still look forward to watching that opening tango/snowmobile sequence—and watching Charlton Heston do a great Nick Fury impression—in high definition!

TV Review: Intelligence (2014)

CBS’s new spy series Intelligence stars Josh Holloway (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Lost) as a secret agent with a microchip in his brain that gives him special powers. (I’ll get into those in a minute.) The logline sounded like Chuck played straight (or a Six Million Dollar Man for the cyber era) when it was first reported, and that’s essentially what it is. Which, on its own, is neither a bad thing nor a good thing. The pilot is expectedly exposition-heavy, but when it comes down to it I suspect the success of this series will depend more on its stars than its not-entirely-fresh (and not entirely successful) premise. And, fortunately, Holloway seems born to play a cocky superspy! (As evidenced in his five minutes of screen time in Ghost Protocol.)

Holloway plays Gabriel Vaughn, a former special forces soldier who’s had a microchip implanted in his brain to… Well, for all the clunky exposition we’re treated to in the pilot (and that makes up about half the episode’s runtime), I have to confess I’m not entirely 100% sure exactly what it does. It kind of seems to have the amazing power to suit the writers’ specific needs at any given moment. But for starters, we meet Gabriel in the middle of the Himalayas at a remote military compound on the India/Pakistan border. By looking at a giant satellite dish, he’s able to “see” the SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) it’s recently transmitted. Not only that, but he’s able to pause the scene of a major terrorist attack that seems right out of Strike Back and then walk through it, observing every detail from every angle. And in those details he discovers that a CIA agent (who we later learn is his wife, who’s been in deep cover for two years!) apparently took part in the attack. Then some soldiers turn up and capture him, and he gets to do some cool old-school spy stuff that doesn’t depend on any chips… and then he somehow opens a door with his mind. Granted, it’s a door controlled by an electronic keypad, but still, he seems to open it with his mind. So that’s where we get the whole thing about his powers being at the whim of what the writer thinks would be cool in a given moment. And, personally, I’m not so into the superhero stuff. I prefer my TV spies to rely on their wits and their fists and a few believable gadgets, but not something that basically amounts to magic. And after this brief magic moment it’s mercifully back to regular spyjinks, and the cold open ends up competently marrying the pre-credits sequences from Tomorrow Never Dies (military compound in Pakistani mountains) and GoldenEye (jumping off of a giant, dam-like cliff).

Once we’ve seen Gabriel’s amazing powers in action, the pilot switches back to the States determined to fill us in on what exactly is going on. To do this, we’re introduced to audience surrogate Riley Neal (Meghan Ory of Once Upon a Time), a Secret Service agent summoned to a secret facility (the U.S. Cyber Command, which the show takes great pains in assuring us is not related to the CIA) where she’s offered a job she never applied for by an enigmatic spy boss named Lillian Strand (CSI’s Marg Helgenberger). That job is using her experience from the Presidential Protection detail (we learn that she wasn’t just a Secret Service agent; she was the best Secret Service agent!) to protect, as Lillian puts it, “the most valuable piece of technology this country’s ever created.” Or, as Gabriel puts it, “following around a charming devil with a microchip in his brain.” Gabriel doesn’t want a babysitter (“So that girl’s supposed to keep me in line, huh?”), and Riley doesn’t want the job (for no particularly compelling reason that I can tell other than checking the “refuse the call” box on the writer’s Hero’s Journey worksheet), but by the end of the episode they seem firmly paired.

Lillian and her team of scientists outline the Clockwork Project (as Gabriel and his enhancements are known) for Riley, explaining, “We connected a human being directly to the information grid. Internet, wifi, telephone, satellite…” (That single line would have sufficed for all the exposition in the episode. The more detail they try to go into, the less credible it all sounds.) So he’s basically a one-man NSA. Not great timing there, CBS, as the NSA isn’t exactly popular right now… but then again the faceless NSA doesn’t have Josh Holloway’s charming-devil eyes.

The actual plot of the week kicks in when the neuro-Geppetto scientist who ran the project (Gabriel’s cyber “father”) is kidnapped by the Chinese. You see, he also created another chip, and now the Chinese want him to implant that into one of their (female) agents, conveniently creating a beautiful femme fatale antagonist for Gabriel. (You can’t have The Six Million Dollar Man without the Bionic Woman, can you? Or Archer without Bionic Barry?) For a minute it looks like they’re actually playing U.S. vs. China spy games on Intelligence, of the sort that can’t be depicted in movies anymore because Hollywood is so desperate for those all-important Chinese dollars… but then it turns out that TV is after that market as well. This bad Chinese agent just happens to have been recently disavowed by his government (just like Wo Fat on the new Hawaii Five-0) and gone rogue, so his actions absolutely don’t reflect those of the benevolent Chinese government! (Absolutely, China, we promise!) At this point we also meet Gabriel’s requisite techie backups, including a fat, long-haired geek named Amos and a skinny, spectacled geek named Nelson. Unlike Chuck’s scene-stealing Nerd Herd, however, neither manages to break out of hackneyed stereotype territory in the pilot.

Gabriel spots a cyber-clue that takes him and Riley to Chinatown. In keeping with the post-Alias spy TV tradition (Undercovers, Exit Strategy, etc.), we’re alerted to foreign (or even just quasi-foreign) locales via localized hip-hop. Mandarin (possibly?) rap fills the speakers as our half-bionic duo takes on Chinese gangsters in an exciting gunfight and eventually an exciting hospital fight. Intelligence is at its best when engaging in traditional action-adventure stuff like this, and not trying desperately to explain its inexplicable high concept. Hopefully the pilot proves the only time they bother with attempts at exposition, and the Intelligence brain trust will just have fun with their silly premise from here on in! Because it is fun if you allow yourself to just go with it and take a ride with the appealing leads. Holloway perfected the charming devil act on Lost and puts it to good use here, and Ory (a brunette, in stark contrast to the recent tradition of pairing impossibly young blond female agents with irascible males on Fringe, Alcatraz, The Black List and more) sometimes channels a young Sandra Bullock. Their chemistry together is promising, and because his ongoing story arc involves a search for his missing wife (whom he refuses to believe has really turned traitor), any sexual tension should convincingly remain just that (in Avengers territory) and not jump the Moonlighting shark anytime soon.

Without being weighed down by nonsensical quasi-scientific exposition, Holloway and Ory should be able to keep Intelligence watchable and entertaining. The constant (and constantly deficient) exposition in the pilot put me off, but there’s an enjoyable spy series with compelling leads itching to come out, so I’ll be tuning in again next week in hopes that that happens.

International Trailer for Le Carre's Most Wanted Man

Dark Horizons has posted an international trailer for Anton Corbijn's eagerly anticipated John le Carré adaptation A Most Wanted Man. Unsurprisingly, it looks great! And while there are some obvious changes to certain characters' ages and nationalities, it still looks pretty faithful to the excellent source material. While it doesn't seem to divulge as much as the Cannes reel that leaked briefly online last summer, this trailer still seems to reveal a little too much... but luckily that will probably only be noticeable to readers of the novel. Lionsgate will release the contemporary Hamburg-set espionage thriller in America sometime this year, but we still don't know when. (It's set to debut at the Sundance Film Festival this month.) It's certainly among the 2014 releases I'm most looking forward to! Directed by Corbijn (The American), A Most Wanted Man stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Robin Wright and two of my favorite contemporary German actors, Nina Hoss (Barbara) and presumptive Oscar contender (for Rush) Daniel Brühl (The Fifth Estate).

NOTE: The original version I embedded was taken down, so here's a new one from Rope of Silicon, thanks to Bob's keen tradecraft!