Reviews

SPOILERS

At 8.8, this is one of the highest-rated episodes of the entire series, but I have to disagree. My problems with it are as follows:

1. We have a bona fide villain in the department and this should have taken more episodes to solve. As it was, with McKeen's incompetence it was just too easy, so there wasn't any tension.

2. The chase was ridiculous. The cars are following, only a few dozen feet behind the fugitive, but when the fugitive car crashes, nobody sees it. Oh yeah, there's a helicopter right on his tail, too. And a car can't crash through a guard rail that way, running parallel to it, it would just bounce off, or the car would just skid or roll rather than plow through. After the crash, the seriously injured McKeen somehow, and for some reason that escapes me, drags himself a good distance away (he has the time for this, despite the other cars having been a couple of seconds behind). Only Nick follows the bloody trail. We get the usual confession (one of the cheap devices too often used in this and other shows), and with taunting by McKeen, Nick shoots the fugitive! Of course, he deliberately missed...

So, where we could have had some real tension, the writers resorted to the implausible artifice in point 2. I simply can't see how an episode with such cheap devices can be rated so highly. Maybe the viewers did it out of loyalty to the Warrick character, but I felt the character's death merited a better episode than this.

SPOILERS

Some episodes are very rewarding, others make one wonder why we waste our time watching this. This episode belongs to the latter category. When I saw the bank teller videos showing a bearded "man" getting $10,000 in change for two fifties on two separate occasions from two separate tellers with impeccable records, I immediately pieced this one together - post-hypnotic suggestion, woman with fake beard - though it took the CSIs a little more time. The one thing that made me hesitate was that this theme is so old and hackneyed that I couldn't believe the writers would have the temerity to use it.

The Sara Sidle bit should have been left out but I guess that after 8 years, she must have a fan base. I don't dislike her, but she's a somewhat bland character, there's no chemistry between her and Grissom, and the writing to get her into the show when she doesn't even have a job there is just contrived.

The other story is half-decent, but the actor couldn't carry it.

I get the impression that the well is drying up.

Spoilers all the way through.

If you're like me, you read the reviews only after seeing the movie or program. If I really enjoyed it, I then check the reaction of others - a sharing of the exhilaration. The other reviews here are excellent and reflect my own views.

This is a role in which Helen Mirren has done consummate justice (yeah, yeah, the wordplay is intentional…): as 'nancinger' aptly says in her review, 'she's as hard as nails on the surface and as crumpled up as ever on the inside.' And tougher than Dirty Harry.

The suspense is palpable. The race against time in the hospital against a murderer, and we really don't know how it will turn out, keeps us on the edge of our seats. But there's suspense in the interrogations, too. Do you, as I do, try to anticipate the questions, try to out-cool the 'interrogatee'? When I'm stumped, Tennison comes through, though not without a sideways glance, a bit of a pause to think. There's suspense in the politics, in how Tennison has to negotiate the labyrinthine obstacles her own department puts in her way, how she has to guess at her own people's agendas, how she has to manage them, offend them yet keep their loyalties, there's suspense as to who will stab her in the back and who will pull through for her.

Some of the devices are obvious, some less so, but they're effective. We see cleaning women often enough to think 'enough, already, I get the point!!!', Tennison reaching out for her father, then pulling her hand back, but most effective is the light shining through a bullet hole onto her eye at the scene of the massacre, recalling her earlier eye exam from its perpetrator – very effective indeed. (And I must give kudos to Oleg Menshikov for his outstanding performance as a charismatic psychopath.)

When Tennison first visited her father, I was worried it would be filler, but it turned out to be essential. A later visit was a wonderful paean to this great TV detective, a rousing peroration that explains, by one who should know, what makes Tennison tick and what she should do. Mix in the hesitation with the hand and we see the twin manifestations of her hardness and her 'crumpledness' in the same scene.

It is inevitable that when I pop in the DVD to watch a new Prime Suspect series, I will watch it through in one sitting, three hours, four hours be damned... A superlative show.

No, this isn't an address, it's the wattage of the average cop in this movie.

Spoilers

Were the wattage 100, Officer Traven would have shown his badge BEFORE the bus reached 50 mph and there would have been no movie. Okay, mistake number 1 (though not for box office). Then there are the cops, with guns out, going into the bomber's house. Now, I kinda had the feeling then and there that the weapon of choice for a bomber is a bomb, but the cops went in and mistake number 2: Boom! A few Darwin awards there. Then Annie Porter, for no good reason, goes to the last scene, revealing herself, and now the bomber knows that they somehow made it off the bus. Mistake number 3, mayhem ensues. This is all too much, but I guess to take our mind off this, they make the bus fly, ET-style. "Don't worry", the producers think, "the idiots will love this." 4/10

Alfred Hitchcock was such a consummate director that approving his work is like investing in a blue chip stock: our taste is unlikely to be berated or otherwise devalued. In Vertigo, we find the usual Hitchcock hallmarks: slow, deliberate development, Hitchcock at the wheel - we must submit to his pace as the Master spins his tale -, backdropped by clean and balanced sets that are pleasing to the eye. Most of you must have encountered the kind of storyteller who can take sparse material and keep us spellbound with it over a period of time that far exceeds what we might have thought possible. This is the essence of Hitchcock's mastery of suspense, and he has deservedly become a benchmark in it.

The contrast between the long buildups of tension in Hitchcock's movies and the instant gratification in many of today's offerings is striking. Most conspicuous today is an over-reliance on loud blasts from the score and over-reactions from the actors to compensate shortcomings in building suspense. At the same time, however, the audience has mutated in reaction to this, and Hitchcock will seem, at times, too slow and timid for our present-day sensibilities. This seems preposterous to those who have embraced him.

There is, however, a pitfall in becoming a benchmark: it validates itself 100%, even if the teeming masses drift away from it somewhat. Having myself experienced that drift, I have a few problems with Vertigo.

SPOILERS

The implausibility - of the premise, of the characters and their reactions, of the master plan that had too many ways to go wrong and too many loose ends as to why it worked as far as it did - is the biggest problem that I suspect is forgiven as being acceptable for its time. The schoolboy crush is simply not credible. A cop being duped by the double who isn't a double is a real stretch. The woman being led up the bell tower by an obviously unstable man is hard to take and what provokes her falling from it (in the end) is just not credible. Those are quite a few allowances that we are asked to make on behalf of a master, sort of like giving charity to the rich.

The acting is competent by today's standards, but no better. I didn't like Novak's performance, but others at IMDb did, and I'll concede it as a matter of personal taste.

Consequently, Vertigo is, for me, an average movie, albeit a superbly crafted one.

END OF SPOILERS

Does this mean that I resent this "benchmark" status I attribute to Hitchcock? No, not in the least. As I said, I drifted from it somewhat, but am closer to it than I am to the excesses of today. And if Hitchcock's oeuvre as a benchmark somehow exerts a pull against these excesses, it is for the better.

There's an old Aesop's fable where a known imitator gets more applause imitating a pig than a farmer pretending to imitate one while actually making a real pig squeal. Plus ça change...

When I'm more conscious of the actors in a movie than the characters they play, I'm disappointed. Unfortunately, Kidman and especially Zellweger had that very effect on me. Zellweger overacted, but may win an Oscar anyway. Both did a good job, but aren't there competent actors who don't have to affect NC accents? Well, then it wouldn't be such an acting performance, would it? I don't doubt for a minute that a strong director can draw excellent performances from little-known actors. However, we all know that a big budget movie needs big names.

Slight spoilers

The movie was very good. We often think of the backdrops subtending the story, yet this time I often thought of the beauty of the landscapes and their constancy, giving form to the ephemeral void in which the characters, now all long dead, turned their tragic pirouettes. It's a movie that slowly pulls a long blade out of a wound only to use it again in a merciless blow as the price of catharsis. We are treated to little foretastes of this catharsis, one of which even explains the Natural Law that makes it necessary.

SPOILERS - read only after seeing the movie

I think I'm a little out of step with most reviewers at IMDb. If the movie is an argument for gun control then it was manipulative and I wasn't influenced, since I would have ruled for the defendant. But that fact doesn't stand in the way of my having enjoyed this movie immensely.

I did have to grant the makers some license, such as allowing that such jury manipulation could be done with impunity:

• It was sheer luck that the break-and-enter fieldman's face was not captured on video.

• Fitch tampered with a jury in a previous gun case and got a totally unexpected verdict (as it turns out). This is lost on the judge who, though already aware of the break-in, gives absolutely no slack to Rohr when his key witness fails to show up (I thought at this point that the judge himself had been 'tampered', especially with the just-previously mentioned teaser that 'anyone can be turned'). It is also lost on Rohr himself who remains oblivious to Fitch's control center while Marlee sics the cops onto it.

But such license has to be granted, given what a wonderfully tense and satisfying movie issues from it. The acting is terrific, the pacing excellent, the tension palpable, the unknowns titillating and the outcome utterly satisfying. The movie is a perfect vehicle for Hackman's skills and is worth seeing a second time to really appreciate his character's transformation. The rest of the cast is also superb.

So yes, I'm a little out of step with most reviewers here. That School of Rock should be rated .8 higher than this boggles my mind. But, these user comments pages notwithstanding. For numbers types, 8.2/10

SPOILERS

In some ways, a TV series on DVD is more gripping than a movie. I just watched season 2, that weighs in at about 18 hours, and less after I started fast-forwarding through most of the Kim scenes (after the Cougar scene, I couldn't take it anymore).

We have to make allowances for the TV medium and the 24-hour format: critical moments happen on the hour, settings are TV-clean, some events don't carry the proper weight (a missing presidential aide suddenly reappears severely injured after a fire - and this doesn't raise very serious alarm bells??), Sherry's bodyguard disappears without explanation (error in continuity), a 2-am cabinet meeting is called to fire the president which it does, by a narrow vote. There is tremendous suspension of disbelief here.

Those allowances made, the program generates excitement, the acting is competent - Sutherland's is quite good - and the pacing is good. Anyone interested in action flicks will be well-satisfied by this TV program. The 9's and 10's it's been getting are exaggerated, though; I give it a 6.

As one who has always wanted a top-quality movie adaptation of LOTR, I must say that Peter Jackson et al did a near perfect job.

Spoilers, ya hear? SPOILERS!!!!!!

The scenes were done with consumate artistry, the acting is terrific, the special effects are damned convincing and the score is excellent, though I'd have recommended atonal music for the bad guys. The battle with the Balrog vies with the first movie's outstanding beginning. The giant elephants, the trolls opening the gate (I thought trolls turned to stone in sunshine. Maybe they're given sunblock...) and of course the Ents are fantastic achievements. It's obvious that Gollum is drawn, but what a character! My brother, who isn't familiar with the books, found him to be among the most fascinating characters he's ever seen.

Gandalf's wink was priceless, Aragorn and Legolas are perfectly cast, Gimli's buffoonery might offend purists but is well within the director's acceptable licence, Frodo (Wood) is proving to be a fine actor. Much of the dialogue, which could so easily fall flat, is pulled off extremely well. Elrond's (who up till then tended towards overacting) talk with his daughter, blended with the images of an aging Elessar (Aragorn), is memorable, on the level of a similar monologue by Al Pacino in "Devil's Advocate". Of the other hobbits, Pippin's Pythonesque absurdity (credit to Mr. Beare) is more irritating than endearing, but you can't like them all. And who doesn't like the great Christopher Lee - wotta villain!!! There's even Aragorn's romantic interest, pitting elf against human, that is vicariously titillating a number of nerds I know.

The wheels could easily have fallen off this movie with all its disparate and outlandish elements. They didn't.

My only problems are with Tolkien's affectations. A couple days' flight by a giant eagle dropping the ring in the fire would be less risky, would have saved time and thousands of lives - but then there wouldn't be a story, would there? Sparing Wormtongue allowed him to give counsel that resulted in hundreds (only??) of deaths (though also resulting in the routing of a vast army). The horses running through those spears was a stretch. Airlifting Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas into the middle of the 10,000 strong army (though a statistical pixel-analysis reveals the number to be approximately 47,350, but this can be attributed to over-zealous rogue computer agency) as it was leaving Isengard would have allowed those three, under divine (read: Tolkien) protection, to decimate the bad guys. At a kill rate of about 300 per hour, the entire army would have been wiped out in a day and a half. When any of these three are out in the open, enemy arrows mysteriously cease to exist. In the first instalment, a single Uruk-Hai was almost too much for Aragorn; now an *injured* Aragorn among Uruk-Hai is like a Tasmanian Devil with razor blades among paper dolls. Oh well, after all it's mythology. I still think the books and the movies are high points in their respective artforms. Looking forward to ROTK.