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Law & Order: UK: Hard Stop (2014)
Inexplicable Opening
As previously mentioned in a prior review, "Leyton was celebrating his birthday with his fellow police officers at his workplace. His fiancée came up in order to take him out for dinner. They got into their car in the (underground) garage when a biker bumped into them, blocking their way out. Shortly after(wards)," the biker shoots Leyton dead.
That's all true, but it is misleading in that it ineptly sets up the murder of Leyton. As Leyton and his fiancée head down to the underground garage, there are cross cuts of their descent into the garage with the biker (motorcyclist) heading toward the underground garage (implied). Sure enough, as Leyton and his fiancée get to and enter their car, the motorcyclist has descended to their parking level and parks directly behind Leyton, bumping their car with his front tire. Leyton prepares for some sort of confrontation with the motorcyclist and rolls down his window to start a conversation. Within seconds, the motorcyclist confronts Leyton with a pistol and is shot dead at very close range. The motorcyclist absconds, setting a train of events into action.
The problem is (1) how in God's name did the motorcyclist KNOW when Leyton would leave the party?; how in God's name did the motorcyclist KNOW on which level of the underground garage Leyton's car was parked?; how in God's name did the motorcyclist KNOW exactly when to arrive at Leyton's car to kill him?
The plotting SCREAMS that SOMEONE AT THE PARTY called the motorcyclist to tell him that Leyton was about to leave so that he can get the ball rolling, but that particular vexing.issue isn't even addressed, much less addressed and dismissed or explained. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
I've seen all the episodes of "Law & Order UK". This is the first amateurish blunder, indeed, the first and only blunder as far as I can recall, that occurred in any of the episodes.
DCI Banks: Bad Boy: Part 1 (2014)
From incompetence to incompetence
If I hadn't promised to review all the episodes of DCI Banks, I would never, ever watch one shoddy episode after another.
I've just watched Season 3, episode 3 (they're combined in the US).
Just when I think it would be impossible for the writers and producers to sink further and further into the muck, they prove me wrong . . . repeatedly.
Ignorance can be cured by education, intelligence, and experience; however, when ignorance is willfully, eagerly, and warmly embraced, it devolves into stupidity. It's catching and its name is DCI Banks. The police, the bad guys, and the dim-witted bystanders infect one another with stupidity more rapidly than a nuclear chain reäction.
It is so, so, so very sad to see so much money pissed away by producers to churn out wooden dialog, adolescent angst possessing adults, implausible plots, unnecessary actions, and immature, even childish emotions.
I have to believe that SOMEONE in charge lost a HUGE bet and is now suffering the consequences.
Whatever you do, DON'T beg, borrow, or steal DVDs of this series and don't stream this series. If you do, it might convince other dim-witted producers that this is the stuff of which dreams are made. The DCI Banks series are not dreams come true; they are surreal nightmares that will cause you to lose faith in man's competence to tell spellbinding stories and to make art.
Avoid DCI Banks to preserve your sanity and to give yourself a chance to vet competent show business productions. They ARE out there, but they're getting as rare as hens' teeth.
DCI Banks: Cold Is the Grave: Part 1 (2011)
An Utter Waste of Time & Electricity.
About halfway through the first episode ("Aftermath"), I decided that I had to see ALL four episodes. I hoped that the plotting, acting, directions, pacing, etc., would improve. Regrettably, that decision was yet another victory of hope over experience.
The plots of all four of the first season's episodes hover on a spectrum covering the mediocre, the implausible, the absurd, the grotesque, the ludicrous, the embarrassing, and the simpleminded. Feel free to insert ANY negative adjective into the above list-the producers certainly left plenty of room for unlimited severe criticisms.
Beyond the god-awful plotting, the dialog is stilted and contrived. It is as awkward as a version of Hamlet presented by self-conscious 8- and 9-year-olds. It is frequently and embarrassingly cringeworthy.
The acting is not nearly as good as the dialog. Stephen Tompkinson simply doesn't have the chops to interpret DCI Banks and Andrea Lowe doesn't have the chops to interpret a traffic signal. They combined lack of talent is compounded by their lousy chemistry, which is suggestive of an impatient, misogynistic auto mechanic trying to deal with a dotty woman whose car "makes a noise like a lot of safety pins in a jar." I have to assume that the episodes' directors hampered the talents of these actors, because it's unimaginable that they could have gotten as bad as they were on their own.
Do not waste time or electricity streaming or watching this very, very, very poor excuse for a British crime procedural. It's hard to believe that the same nation that produced "Prime Suspect," "Morse," and even "Endeavour" had the nerve to boil the tablecloth on which those superb crime dishes were served and then try to feed it to us a soup.
McCallum: Dead But Still Breathing (1997)
Only if you're desperate & drunk
This is an example of writers at the end of the season who have no skill at plotting,dialog, or the dangers of the implausible and the unnecessary.
A psycho plots to torture & kill McCallum slowly as revenge for court testimony. He sets his plan in motion. The cops are alerted and tap McCallum's phone at home & work. The cops arrest the wrong man. Subsequent taped phone calls establish that they've arrested the wrong man, but nothing seems to be done about it. The psycho gives abundant clues about his history with McCallum on the tapes, but no one uses the info to identify, much less apprehend, the psycho-which they could easily have done. The plotting is absolutely absurd and, even more frustrating, in the hands of imaginative and talented writers and a director who understands plot and pacing, it could have been very, very well done, but it wasn't. It is shear crap. The ONLY (here I become a sexist) worthwhile screen time is that devoted to Zara Turner, who plays Angela-a forensic doctor. Ms Turner is talented and undeniably stunning. A few glimpses of her are worth wading through the sloppy episode.
Innan vi dör (2017)
Overall plot is imaginative, but falls apart in the details
Christian is rash rather than clever; he's foolhardy rather than brave; and he's lucky rather than strategic.
Christian seems to have no sense of or appreciation of the dangers lurking around him, waiting to pounce, because he knows the writers will save him.
He uses his second cell phone carelessly and he is easily distracted by Blanka, despite the dangers from her family and from her psychopathic boyfriend.
Was James Bond this stupid when he was coming up? No.
The writers have chosen to put Christian in precarious situations in order to ratchet up the tension and the suspense, with the trade-off being a complete disregard for the damage to viewers' opinion of Christian for getting himself into those situations in the first place.
When a character does something that is stupid and that puts himself into danger, it's absurd, even grotesque, suddenly and inexplicably, to give that character the wit and the presence of mind to extract himself from the danger. No real character switches from stupid to resourceful and then back again on cue.
The rules are: (1) make it plausible and (2) make it necessary.
One cannot suspend disbelief repeatedly because of the same implausible and unnecessary formula.
O sabor das margaridas (2018)
Review
"Bitter Daisies" is seven hours of agony. The story is unnecessarily convoluted; the plot is ridiculous; the dialog is stilted; there are numerous unnecessary, awkward, and implausible scenes; the subtitles are often inaccurate; the acting is forced, hammy, and pathetically melodramatic; the characters are flat, predictable, and uninteresting; the cast is not talented, attractive, or memorable; the direction is puerile, relentlessly tedious, and mind-numbing.
There is absolutely NO element of this disaster that merits a compliment. It really is that bad! Do not waste your time. It is the most unprofessional mini-series I have ever suffered through. The producers (Netflix!) should apologize to the entertainment community for foisting this insultingly stupid piece of work on unsuspecting, trusting subscribers.
This review contains no spoilers because the series itself was spoiled from the get-go.
Lucifer (2016)
If there's a Hell, this is it!
This series is, without a doubt, an utter waste of time. The plots are implausible, the characters are ludicrous, the casting is pathetic: all the so-called actors are breathtakingly untalented mediocrities. No one older than 10 or with an IQ above Tiger Woods's best PGA round would fall for the contrived characters, plots, sets, etc. The only upside is that now, more than ever, I desperately hope that there is a Hell and that everyone connected to this POS will end up there, forced to view their handiwork on the screen for all eternity.
Specifically, Lucifer is not at all intelligent, educated, or experienced. Supposedly he ran Hell from its beginnings until just before he arrived in Los Angeles, so one would think that he would have at least minimum familiarity with humanity, yet he careens from blunders to bafflement and then back to blunders. If this is the guy who's supposedly the Father of Lies and who specializes in convincing people that he doesn't even exist, then Donald Trump is a contender for the Nobel Prize in Physics. The actor who plays Lucifer is a pretentious scene-stealing melodramatic bit of rancid ham whose talent plumbs the depths of a teacup, with pinkie finger extended.
Poor Chloe is an utterly clueless, homely, and over-the-hill Los Angeles Police Farce defective. Her odd mouth pouting beneath the most pronounced philtrum I've ever seen is almost overshadowed by a pair of flaring eyebrows that look like Mercury's winged sandals. Both features fail to mask the lack of talent of the actress who plays her, for she doesn't have the cleverness or the range of a dim-witted sixth-grader in a middle-school homage to "what I did last summer."
Mazikeen has a sexy left eyebrow, but she would have been more impressive as a character if she had, as the old joke goes, merely telephoned her lines in.
This series is really, really bad, and not in a good way. Don't waste your time.
Keeping Faith (2017)
Harmless . . . mostly
During the first six episodes (I've yet to stream episodes 7 & 8), I put up with a lot of introspective, soul-searching scenes in which Faith (usually) seems to be questioning the very universe itself for having put her into this horrible situation; however, my patience ran out during episode 6.
I live in southwest Missouri and my experience with British crime dramas and police procedurals is limited to what I've streamed on Netflix and Acorn; nevertheless, until I started to stream "Keeping Faith," the basic rules were rather clear and unwavering, much like the U.S. system, which is better in some ways and not as good in others.
Episode 6 six included DI Williams's bringing Faith in for questioning. I've learned that, in the UK, the police can hold a so-called person of interest for, I think, up to 24 hours without charge and, after the 24 hours have passed, the police must either release or charge the person. Even DI Williams, as she slammed the cell door on Faith and her lawyer, said that she had "16 more hours" before she had to make up her mind whether or not to charge Faith with . . . well, that was never made clear. There seemed to be no clear-cut crime with which DI Williams had enough evidence to charge Faith; indeed, not even enough to indicate a crime had even taken place, much less that Faith was the perp.
Nevertheless, in what seemed a not very long time frame at all, DI Williams & her PC opened Faith's cell door and told Faith she was releasing her on bail. Of course, one has to be charged with an offense before one needs to post bail, but Faith hadn't been charged with a crime. How could she be required to post bail? Had the police charged Faith, that scene would have been included in the episode, but it wasn't because she was never charged. That's either poor writing or poor editing: Is the "I arrest you" scene lying on the editing-room floor? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Subsequently, DI Williams contacted Child Services to put Faith's 3 kiddies into care, yet their paternal grandparents, a doting grandmother and a very supportive, well-off grandfather, who is a prominent attorney (retired), didn't say boo. How could that be? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Certainly the kiddies could have been placed with their paternal grandparents rather than put into care, but that possibility wasn't even broached, much less attempted. Add to that the odd notion that the retired-prominent-attorney-grandfather didn't try to pursue the matter through legal channels and, frankly, that's an utter impossibility. No grandparents with money, connections, and expertise would have allowed the police to put their grandchildren into care without lifting a finger. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Certainly the series has a lot of suspense that keeps viewers glued to their TVs; certainly most of the stereotypical characters turn out to be not so stereotypical after all; certainly EVERYONE seems to have a dark secret; certainly there is a lot of unexplained, even odd behavior going on, and certainly there are all those boring, boring, boring introspective scenes which, if you can fast-forward through them, are worth a miss.
The plot twists are good, most of the characters are well drawn, and, thank God, unpredictable, but the meandering story line is far, far too long. I have no idea how season 1 will end, but I am confident that tighter writing and tighter direction could have reduced the episodes from 8 to 6 and it would have been a far better production (for less money).
If the writer & director care what advice an informed amateur has to offer, it's this: don't have any character do or say anything that's not plausible and necessary. That rule of thumb has been frequently ignored so far.
Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun (1986)
A poorly written, poorly directed waste of time
The writers and director have priests and nuns doing what no priest or nun would do. Simply preposterous. Suspending disbelief is not enough; you actually have to shoot, mutilate, and burn your disbelief and scatter the ashes at one of the poles in order to tolerate this garbage.
Michele Greene's character isn't a nun, but a novitiate. She'd be in the convent or in class, not acting as some visiting priest's aide-de-camp; in fact, no nun would be in that capacity with a priest. It's ridiculous.
The priest wouldn't be at a hotel. He'd be in a rectory guest room. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Priests and nuns wouldn't "pal around" as these two did. It simply wouldn't happen. Preposterous.
Nuns wouldn't gossip with one another in the convent as is represented in the movie. These are not naive schoolgirls who would spend their time ooooohing and aaaaaahing about some boy. It's pathetic what's represented as plausible by the writers and the director.
Too bad. Michele Greene is, as usual, hot, even with her snood, but it's all too, too preposterous. Have a vomit bucket next to yourself if you're forced to watch this nonsense by a Perry Mason/Raymond Burr fan whom you don't want to offend
I suspect Burr needed the money and Greene needed the work. Burr's no doubt spinning in his grave and Greene's still cringing.
Face/Off (1997)
Ideal film for anyone whose IQ is <80.
Utterly unrealistic. The premise is as contrived as they get, making it impossible to suspend disbelief even if you have a 15-story crane. The actors hammed it up full-time, but not nearly as much as director Woo did. He must have laughed all the way to the bank with the money the (possbily drunk) producers shelled out. It's too bad that it was handled as it was. If Woo had realized that the story was comic-book material and had elevated the premise to the level of Batman or Spiderman or the like, it could have been acceptable-level tongue-in-cheek entertainment. As it is, it's more like the Marx Brothers without the (intended) laughs. Don't waste your time or your money on this turd.
Killer Instinct: From the Files of Agent Candice DeLong (2003)
A waste of time for the viewer, a waste of money for the producer.
This is an utterly unrealistic representation of the FBI (an organization that eventually succeeds, despite itself). The plot events are contrived, the acting is hammy, the dialog is stilted, the characters are wooden. It's about as unrealistic as a film can get without entering the realm of animation. Over-the-hill actors and actresses doing their yeoman best to grab a few dollars for their twilight years. Do the world a favor: buy a copy of the tape (if it ever went to tape) and erase it. Then discard the tape. If you're Catholic, it might serve as remission for some of your more egregious sins. If you delight in crappy FBI-oriented films, take a look at Face/Off with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. Both Travolta and Cage duck under the table whenever anyone mentions the film--and they're right to do so.