True Detective Series Two

Sleuth or Dare

True Detective Series Two
8 episodes June - August 2015
USA HBO

Okay... so the second series of True Detective takes a bunch of new characters and locations and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually relate to the first series in any way. This one is set in Vinci, California and deals with three police detectives (initially, their status changes somewhat throughout the course of the story) and one career criminal who is trying to leave his illegal empire building behind him and retire to a lucrative, legitimate business.

So the three detectives of the tale are Detective Ray Velcoro played by Colin Farrell, Detective Ani Bezzerides played by Rachel McAdams, Officer Paul Woodrugh played by Taylor Kitsch and all three of these are from different territories, teamed up initially to solve the murder of the right hand man of the career criminal... a victim who has been tortured to death and his eyes burned out with acid. 

The fourth protagonist of the tale is the criminal himself, Frank Semyon played by Vince Vaughn... who wants to find out who is attacking him through the death of his employee and just what is going on and, of course, will it impede him in his chance to become a legitimate business man. 

Now, I was not as on board with this one at first... mainly because I liked the first series so much and particularly the two characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. But... and this is no bad thing... this second show is definitely not trying to reproduce the same atmosphere used there and, as I slowly got into the characters and how the various pieces of the jigsaw come together, I enjoyed this one almost as much. 

There are a couple of basic similarities to the first one though. Such as the story taking place over different time zones. However, in the first series it was a good decade or two between settings and this one takes place for two weeks over the first part of the case and then just a couple of months down the line, after the aftermath of the carnage of the shoot out which ends the investigation. Unlike the first one, though, it doesn’t ping pong between the two times and is presented in a more linear fashion.

Secondly, the initial investigations in the first two seasons ends the careers of the main protagonists... and this one, with the catalyst for that happening at the end of episode four in a most spectacular action sequence, sees them coming together again to work the case and dive deeper into it a little later. 

So, yeah, this one has a very different atmosphere from the first season and, I think if I were to compare it to something... and this was perhaps on the mind of the writer simply by osmosis... it would be the novels of ace crime writer James Ellroy, especially his LA Quartet of novels. I mean, the characters in this are all either bad and compromised in some way or have a huge chip on their shoulders. Or both. It’s like the world of Ellroy’s LA, where nobody is really good, especially the cops, is playing out in a slightly more toned down version here. It’s not as in-your-face violently gory as Ellroy, quite a lot of the brutality is implied here... but I can’t help but think Ellroy’s writing must have has at least some influence on the DNA of season two of this show. 

The acting is terrific. I’ve never been a fan of Colin Farrell in the past but he does an excellent job here of giving his character many facets which gives the audience an insight into his motivations and choices. McAdams is equally good in this and, as the only one who isn’t bent and on the take initially, she has a steely determination which puts other characters on edge. Taylor Kitsch is incredible in this. It took me a while to figure out that this fairly ‘contained to the point of instability’, confused character once played a very confident John Carter of Mars (reviewed here). He looks totally different here and, if I hadn’t read the cast list, I would have never known it was him. 

And as for Vincent Vaughn, well. Such an understated performance where he mostly uses his eyes and forehead to give an air of intimidation but, also a certain thoughtfulness. He’s a man who wears his history on his sleeve almost and, even though you see him do brutal things (like using pliers to extract the gold teeth of someone who won’t do what they’re told), you end up totally sympathising with him somehow and, yeah, rooting for him by the end of the show, for sure. In much the same way you sympathise with Robert DeNiro’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, even though you know he’s done brutal things in his past. Vaughn, who I’ve seen do both comedy and human monster really well, in the same film no less in Freaky (reviewed here), really manages to ring the sympathy out of this while being totally shark-like in his role of head hoodlum (something which Jimmy Cagney could also channel well in some of his gangster pictures, if memory serves). It was such a good choice to cast him here and he pretty much steals any scene he’s in, in my opinion. 

And, yeah, that’s me done. The ending is not remotely similar to that of the first season, in the way things get resolved (or might possibly get some kind of closure after the end of the last episode) and the downward spiral it takes is not much less than the audience may be expecting by the last few episodes. So, yeah, it’s hard to compare it to the first series since they are both very different animals but I certainly thought True Detective Series Two was very good television and is worth a watch if you are into stories with a gritty undertone to them. 

American Assassin

Son Of A Beach

American Assassin
2017 USA Directed by Michael Cuesta
UK cinema release print.

American Assassin is a movie based on a ‘prequel novel’ from a successful series of books by Vince Flynn about a character called Mitch Rapp, played here by Dylan O' Brien and set in the world of international espionage. Now, I’ve not read the book but I understand there was at least one major change to the story settings here but, obviously, my ability to judge this movie in terms of adaptation is non-existent. But, as I’ve said so many times on this blog before, I may not be able to tell you how faithful it is to the original source material but I do know how it plays as a film.

The story starts with some poignant POV footage of Mitch proposing to his girlfriend on a beach. The POV stuff ends and the film goes into regular style footage when, as he runs off to get some celebratory drinks, terrorist open fire on the tourists and she is killed. The change to the story I was talking about earlier was, I believe, to have the girl killed in a beach shooting for this whereas, in the novel, I believe she was killed in the Lockerbie bombing. Jump to 18 months later and Mitch has been training himself up (cue long montage sequence) and is about to infiltrate a terrorist cell to start a long revenge/war on terrorism process. However, because he’s been drawing attention to himself, the CIA have been watching him and when things go a bit pear shaped for Mitch, they come to the rescue like the cavalry and eventually recruit him, sending him to train with super duper ex-Navy seal, killing machine turned instructor Stan Hurley, played here by Michael Keaton.

From here the film progresses along a familiar, somewhat clichéd but largely enjoyable story line as Hurley’s team, including Mitch, have to go after a large haul of stolen plutonium and preferably retrieve it before it can be made into a bomb. However, an ex-student of Hurley’s, who is bearing a grudge and was thought missing presumed dead, is also involved in the plot and... yeah, you get the picture. There’s nothing new here. It’s pretty much just a Western revenge story. Back in the old days the bad guys would have been red Indians. If the film had come out in the sixties it would have been changed to a cold war story and the Russians would have been the bad guys. Where we are with it now is that it’s centred around Middle Eastern terrorism to an extent but, whatever, a fairly typical film plot with just the bad guy stereotypes updated to modern times.

It also doesn’t matter though because the film is fast paced, doesn’t always rely on dialogue heavy scenes to tell its story and is actually not all that much about glorifying the violence although, it has to be said, there is rather a lot of it in here and it gets quite brutal at times (I really could have done without the extended torture sequence towards the end of the movie but it wasn’t too harrowing to watch, I guess). In some ways it’s a little bit like the other action movie I saw at the cinema a couple of weeks ago... Stratton (reviewed here) but this one seems to have a bigger budget and is a lot sleeker in terms of how thing looks. Of course it helps that you have wonderful actors like Michael Keaton added into the mix, playing somebody who he’s possibly just a little too old to play, I suspect but, because it is Keaton we are talking about here, he looks like he really could do everything he does in the movie without losing credibility and, as you might expect, Keaton knocks it out of the park. It also has a good little score by Steven Price which keeps things nicely ticking over when needed.

Some of the editing was a little bit more aggressive than I was expecting. You expect some fast, possibly out of kilter and sometimes jarring edits in an action sequence but even in the more slower paced sequences, I thought some of the ways in which shots were cut together didn’t show the most audience friendly route. Now, that might well have been because the frame designs being utilised in these sections seemed less likely to mesh without leading the eyes away from the place they were looking at in the previous shot... which is something modern directors sometimes lose sight of, I think.

Another thing which is a slight but not insurmountable problem here is that the movie, as formulaic as it is, has a tendency towards telegraphing its intentions somewhat during the course of the film. For instance, I was pretty sure that something very specific was going to be revealed about one of the characters from very early on in the film, once that character had been introduced and... yeah... I was right. However, that particular issue... which I’m trying not to talk about because I don’t want to included any spoilers here... is actually upended again later on in the film and the result of the specific twist I’m talking about is somewhat built on and realigned along a different path before the story is done... which is about as good a thing as could have happened with it, to be honest.

Ultimately, American Assassin never really rises above being a good little action thriller but, as far as that goes, that should probably be enough. It’s not one I could repeat watch or anything but it was a good evening out at the cinema and, as a bonus, you get to see Michael Keaton playing a tough as nails action hero character and, really, you couldn’t ask for much more than that. Also, the very last shot, which is pretty much a ‘break the fourth wall’ moment in the film, was the perfect way to end this one. Definitely worth a trip out to your local to catch this assassin’s ass in action.