Reviews

Pro: stylish, atmospheric, characters not bad, intriguing premises.

Con: too many ridiculous gaffes I don't ask for realism, only that the gaps be not insultingly obvious while you watch. There are many films that while objectively silly at least maintain a kind of internal believability, but The Game fails even simple threshold tests. The huge strains on logic range from the everyday work of spies to the most fundamental twists of the plot. And it's too bad, because if you like Cold War drama, this one seemed so promising, a sort of Tinker Tailor with better looking actors.

SPOILERS AHEAD! For example, why does MI5 use agents clearly already known to the KGB to do not-at-all-subtle surveillance? And haven't these people even heard of disguises? My god, they don't even bother to change their clothes! Joe Lamb is always wearing that same overcoat! And just how did a bunch of Soviet sleeper agents get to be in multiple British government positions without apparently ever going through even the most rudimentary of background checks? Seriously, we're asked to believe that none of these functionaries was vetted? That no one noticed they didn't exist until they were 20 or so? Okay, obviously British security has had some major lapses of the Kim Philby variety, but I think even your basic personnel office would catch on to this situation!

I am a bit of a WW II buff, and while I generally find Foyle's War to have a very authentic air, and I love how the plots revolve around real (but often not well known) aspects and incidents, I caught a pretty basic error in this episode: When the wife is being interviewed by Foyle, she mentions her husband worked at Bletchley during the war.

But Bletchley and the role of the codebreakers remained highly classified information until several decades later! And people took it very seriously--there were married couples who only found out in the 1970s that both of them had been at Bletchley (it was a huge operation) at the same time during the war. To speak about it in the 40s would be to break the Official Secrets Act, which could result in criminal prosecution. So, it would have been unlikely that the wife would even have known about her husband's war work, and even if she had, unlikely she would ever have spoken of it.

that said, I love this series. I only wish there had been more episodes in the earlier seasons!

I watched this show last night, and woke up feeling so annoyed about the utter contempt for the intelligence of viewers that I'm moved to write this review. As other reviews have noted, the acting and tension elements are good, which makes it all the more noticeable that the writing is so woefully deficient.

Some genres don't depend on credible authenticity, but the legal thriller is not one of them. The Escape Artist asks the viewer to believe constantly in the implausible and impossible; it lacks even the semblance of internal consistency. I'm not talking about simply technical errors, but about constant gaffes on critical plot elements:

1. That a murder charge in a case rife with "serial killer" implications would be completely set aside by procedural error, rather than result in a mistrial and new proceedings.

2. That a high profile case would be assigned for prosecution to the same chambers where the victim's husband works?? Yes, barristers pride themselves on impartiality, but seriously, why would anyone take the chance of obvious conflict of interest (and the potential blowback on careers; there may be a press embargo during the case but I can't imagine this would be ignored by them forever). I'm a former defense attorney in the U.S., and granted we have a different system, but surely the Crown Prosecution Service pays more attention to such things than this would indicate?

Even if we accept this highly unlikely allocation of the prosecution, we are then asked to believe that the firm is assigning their most incompetent junior to the case because "the others are too busy." Oh, right. Rather than reassign one of their other cases, they're going to go with this guy on the absolutely most serious and sensational crime they're ever likely to handle.

3. That the young son, known to be present during the murder, would not be handled by someone experienced in child psychology, therapy etc, rather than just have his father barking at him, "Sure you didn't see anything?" Again, any legal system has errors and sloppiness, but we're asked to believe time and time again that it's happening in the most high profile kind of case?

There are also less plot-driven errors: why is Tara out to get Will? If it's professional jealousy, the background has not been established. (Go watch Silk for a primer in how to do this the right way.) Is she worried about the firm's reputation? Why not tell them to be more careful?

And Maggie knows she's had a home invasion, apparently on two occasions, but sees no need to involve the police? She's representing a guy with SOCIOPATH SERIAL KILLER written all over him in mile high letters, she knows he may well have killed the wife of his last attorney, and now it looks like he's broken into her house and she's basically so okay with this, she only makes a brief phone call to a colleague? Really?

Even insignificant things were botched. What happens to the family dog? he's present at the cottage when Kate is killed, but unhurt (killer apparently unhampered by presence of dog, neighbors not alerted by any barking, etc.) and then he completely disappears. Let's see, the father thought it was a good idea to get rid of the last remaining continuity and comfort for the kid? Feeble, just feeble.

I expect far better than this from Masterpiece. Don't waste such a good cast on such a train wreck of a script next time.

I saw this at a film festival, and went in not knowing anything about it, not having heard any word-of-mouth reviews. (Ironically, it turned out I had actually met the film maker and actor-charming blokes-at a documentary screening the day before, but not recognized the Spanish name of their film as one I was going to see).

The movie is all around well-done: an intelligent script, good characters, nicely filmed and acted. The main character is all the more interesting for being not easily pigeon-holed--is he good, is he bad, are you going to root for or against him? I really liked it, and found myself thinking about it afterwards. It has a propulsive feel, though, set in about a 24 hour period, and has both a lot of tension, and enough action, that it kept us sitting upright in the midst of a five-film day.

At the Q and A afterwards, the Spanish film maker was asked why the villains were French. he explained that the logical escape route was north to France, and they knew they wanted that "chase" element in the film, so it made sense to have French bad guys. He added that having made that decision, they did give the villains names of their French friends!

I wanted to like this film, because it really is a compelling (and true) story.

But there was too much wrong with it. The overly melodramatic presentation (and music--can you say Steven Spielberg on a really bad day?) seriously took away from what could have been a truly human drama. The lead actress was so boringly humorless and the whole struggle-with-her-junkiedom so overdone that it was hard to have any sympathy for either her, or anyone who put up with her! and why was the dude from Downton Abbey playing an Iranian, in such unconvincing fashion? It's not like there aren't LOTS of really good actors from that region! The takeaway? Maybe someone should make a documentary on the subject matter.