Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan

    Amazon Prime’s   series “Jack Ryan” pilot episode gives you plenty to look at right out of the gate.    The opening scene puts you back in time to when you popped cassettes into your   boom box and danced solo around your bedroom  to the amusement of your little brother.   Except that this is not America and the two boys in the opening sequence are not American kids.  They’re dancing to a “Men Without Hats” tune when a   formation of low flying jets lays a heap of bombs on some  real estate.  This is how kids grow up to be terrorists, according to a popular TV meme. It’s as good a place as any to start  begin an international spy thriller series. 

 From the Middle East to America then where  the studious mildly athletic  preppy boy Jack Ryan is  wearing his  Boston College tee-shirt while rowing his crew boat up a placid river. John Krasinski is an engaging Jack Ryan.    Extreme closeups of his face while rowing   make you like him right away.  He’s the kind of guy mothers want their daughters to marry. He’s the kind of guy the girl’s dad wants to corner into a conversation about the Washington Redskins. Later on when he’s being the virtuous non-polluting CIA analyst riding his bike to work we run into Jack’s boss, James Greer (Wendell Pierce).

    

Pierce was a a laid back street-wise cop in “The Wire” but here he’s been ddemoted to a job behind a desk after screwing up some unknown business in Pakistan.    Greer’s not thrilled with anything about his new post.    He’s accustomed to more action than he expects to get in this new backwater job posting.    He’s an operations guy.  The team he leads at Langley is a heady group of academics and policy wonks.  

 “I heard he went all Colonel Kurtz in the desert. Started making S.A.D dip their bullets in pig’s blood so anyone they killed wouldn’t go to Paradise,” one analyst gossips to Ryan.  So you see right away the creators of this spy thriller are not afraid to call a spade a spade, even if you can’t tell one spade from another until it’s too late.  

Dr. Jack Ryan’s office has this plaque at its entrance:  “CTC Terror Finance and Arms Division.”  He’s no James Bond, in other words.   Jack Ryan’s job is to find patterns of evil in the labyrinth  of financial transactions.  There’s a lot of alphabet soup mentioned, things like SINGINT, fun to look up if you’re so inclined.   I’ll save you the trouble of an online search for SWIFT;  It’s a system set up to track terrorist financing networks around the world. And of course Ryan gets a lead on a high value target who has an unusual pattern of financial transactions in Yemen where the Saudis are battling Houthi rebels not only capsizing Yemen but threatening the Saudi southern border.

The filming is picturesque, the camera roaming over medieval fortificatioins and desert plains to  ( Al Menajeer Syria) the house where the HVT lives with his wife and children.   A convoy of menacing strangers armed to the teeth approaches the compound.  Hanin, the wife of the terrorist mastermind, is tasked to hide away a light complexioned Chechen terrorist and a bunch of other guys.    In Suleiman’s (the HVT)  world, women are expected to ‘know their place.’  

Of course,  Ryan and Greer are hot to find these sweethearts.  Among their more hideous schemes was a plan to infiltrate a joint U.S./Arab military base and free a terrorist held prisoner there.  Clever stuff all the way through makes “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” one of the liveliest action shows on TV.  They way the terrorists gain access to the compound is chilling.  They’ve hidden weapons in the sewn up body cavities of dead fighters who were sent to the compound morgue. A massive gunfight follows and seems never-ending.  

Performances were solid throughout. Great direction of this fast action episode and taut editing made any weak spots fade quickly into memory.  The script writers did a fine job with dialogue, quippy, spare, informed,  not drowning the characters in hollow “Go, go, go!” or “I’ve got this” kind of heroics. 

Virtue doesn’t triumph here. The bad guys get away in the end as they often do in real life.     As far as serial action films go, this first episode of “Tom Clancy”s Jack Ryan” sets a high bar for others including its own future episodes.

  

  

Gomorrah: Second Time Around

Just finished watching for a second time an Italian TV series called Gomorrah.  Rhymes with Camorra.   Unlike the American Mafia or the Sicilian Mafia, the camorras have no hierarchical structures.  There is not one single camorra – there are several, rather like constellations.

Organization is horizontal, rather than pyramidal. Positions may be inherited. Rules are not always followed.

It seemed strange to me how the actors and directors of this TV series were, in interviews, saying such nice things about American films and TV series.  Unless they were referring to ‘slick,’ I kind of thought the opposite. The Italian version of a crime epic was grittier and more realistic than the ones I’ve watched – excepting perhaps “Casino” where there is not much room for romanticism. 

But even there, Gomorrah was hands-down more realistic than any mafia conforming fare found on American TV and film. Hey listen, wiseguy, I’m not putting down the American films like Godfather and Casino and TV shows like “The Sopranos.” I thought they were great.

Gomorrah is different, that’s all I’m saying.  Part of it is my own taste for realism. The more realistic the better. So let’s face it, the comorras of southern Italy don’t play very nice. 

Gomorrah, offered by Sundance TV and still “On Demand” has three directors. You may have noticed that earlier I used the plural when I referred to the director (s).

There is Stefano Sollima, the key director of the character Pietro Savanstano, head of the clan. His wife is named Imma for Immaculata – how’s that for an Italian name? She gets her own director but in most cases she needs one only to move her through the scenes. Then they have a son.  His name is Gennaro. At first he’s clueless but then grows into a chip off the old block.  His director is Claudioo Cupellini. 

What’s up with three directors?  Well, Stefano Sollima is the top man but the other two have a great deal of independence.  There are three driving forces therefore. Just as in real life the tensions occur between people, so it is with these characters.  It’s fascinating – it’s conflict you can feel. It gets under your skin. The characters are despicable and noble at the same time. As in Game of Thrones, these three characters live in separate kingdoms, separate domains.

Other details:  The screenwriter is Stefano Bises.  The filming makes use of 126 different locations, 225 actors, and hundreds of actors. Italians go big if they go at all. The series transformed Naples into a huge movie set.

Though some Italians have complained of bad publicity for Naples (See Naples and Die) actor Salvatore Esposito, who plays Gennaro Savastano, points out that tourism to Naples has increased, not the other way around. I have to say that I am curious, too.  My father was a ‘Napolitano” (Neopolitan). 

The stories are true. They come from Robert Savio’s book of the same name:  Gomorrah. Some of the inspiration, too, comes from Matteo’s film which was adapted also from Savio’s book.

The Romanoffs and the French Ruling Class

Just watched the first episode of “The Romanoffs” a social satire sometimes requiring English subtitles.  The location is Paris.   Don’t frown – there are millions of people who love subtitles – it gives us a sense of superiority.  Actually, I’m thrilled by subtitles.  They provide a heighted sense of superiority that you just can’t get from films in your native language. We get to test our three or four years of high school French. 

  “The Romanoffs” is more of an anthology than a series.  The plots and subplots are not on-going, and neither are the characters. The only link from one episode to another will be some kind of connection, scientifically illusory,  to the Romanoffs.  It must also be mentioned that the ‘episodes’ of “The Romanoffs” are more like individual high concept feature films.

You know the Romanoffs, right?   The  last royal line to have ruled Russia before the Bolshevik revolution?   The Romanoff family came to a bizarre and gruesome ending when they were slaughtered, along with mad monk Rasputin who became a legend by refusing to die easily.  The foundational element of the story is that there was a female survivor who trailed a long line of descendants.  

 In the past  there were several frauds who claimed to be   descended from the Romanoff line.   Those frauds finally came to an end in 2008 when forensics scientists  dated and identified some old bones of Anastasia Romanoff, the purported survivor.

 Portraits of the   Romanoff family being shot down in their palace  are matched to the tune of hard-rock-driven Tom Petty’s “Refugee.” Tom would have liked that, maybe he saw it anyway.   The song bring you back from the era of the portraits to the present — modern France with its clash of old and new.  

 We’re speeding along in an ambulance where   an autumnal post-middle aged aristocratic woman begs to see the Arc de Triomphe one last time before she dies.  She is not dying. She is a drama queen, a grand-dame who puts on airs and lives in a luxurious apartment in the hear of Paris. ( Marthe Keller is Anushka,)   

That she doesn’t die is the problem for her American nephew Greg and his acquisitive girlfriend Sophie. Sophie is acquisitive in the sense that she’s hooked onto Greg with a view to acquiring the multi-million dollar apartment said to be the former home of one of a famous Romanoff duke.    Among the abode’s many treasures is what appears to be an original Faberge egg,  important for other reasons late in the episode.

 Back at home and not getting all the attention she feels she deserves, Anushka is attended by her nephew Greg (Aaron Eckhart) and Sophie (Louise Bourgoin).  Sophie is highly annoyed that she and Greg had to cancel a planned vacation because of Anushka’s fainting episode.  The caregiver Greg has hired to assist his aunt arrives late.  Anushka could likely hold her own with American rappers when it comes to trash talk:  “I forgive you for coming here in yesterday’s clothing and smelling of testicles,” she says to the poor girl, and then fires her. 

 Beautiful images of Paris swim in the background.   Lively French tunes play accompany the visuals.   Sophie’s  burning  hot and  uses her good looks to keep Greg on his toes. Even during their lovemaking she keeps up a lively chat which   doesn’t in the end defeat her dual purposes, the least noble of which is to acquire Anushka’s apartment.  “We’re never going to get that apartment unless the bitch dies.” And the bitch never dies.  But that’s the foreplay Sophie employs while Greg tries to get it on.

 It’s not as if they’re destitute.  On the contrary, Sophie owns a small hotel of the middling sort, complaining to friends that her patrons are increasingly of the lower classes. At a dinner with friends, one of them makes a complaint that seems to be heard everywhere these days: “The middle class is gone.  There is nothing left but the poor and ultra-rich.”  

   After firing the “Polish slut,” Anushka must now endure Hajar Azim, the Muslim caregiver replacement who is greeted by having the door slammed in her face.  There are other insults to follow and an ultimate accommodation which leaves Sophie reeling.   Beyond the bigotry, there is   class warfare and a history lesson.  Madame Anastasia LeCharnay (Anushka, for short)  claims historical superiority over the young Muslim woman who endures it all with kindness and patience.  “We beat you at Tours in 732. In 1204, we burned Constantinople (Istanbul, now). We beat you in Jaffa, Damascus, and Beirut.  We took Jerusalem and gave it to the jews, and in 1683, we pushed back from Vienna for good.”  Tormenting the poor caregiver further, she holds up a croissant to deliver the final blow:  “We took the symbol from your flag. . . “ She holds up a croissant (shape of a crescent) “. . . and every day we eat you for breakfast.”  

 Anushka may be the Archie Bunker of the French aristocracy but she’s not stupid.  While she remains tethered to her class superiority, she develops an uneasy and often intimate alliance with Hajar.  The relationship is funny, not mean, and Hajar endures all this with the determination of someone who wants to achieve an important goal. In Hajar’s case, she desires to complete her studies and become a full-fledged nurse.  Weiner’s motif here isn’t to inspire hatred of the French upper classes, but rather to ridicule them for their fear of a  changed world.   The satire is hopeful rather than mean-spirited and  thereby more successful.   Should I say that Anushka, mainly to spite Sophie but also because she’s become deeply attached to Hajar,  changes her will so that Hajar inherits the apartment and its luxuries?  

Having watched the episode develop I should have seen it coming but I didn’t.  Let me tell you now, I’m dying to.  Sophie gets the egg.  How she gets the egg is kind of charming and funny but also predictable. What’s not predictable is that it’s a convention   in film and TV that one go in the sack doesn’t lead to pregnancy.  But come on, boys, admit you have   fallen for the shy Muslim girl in the hijaj. What’s up with that anyway? Is it a lurid Arabian Nights fantasy or a pornographic writer’s dream?      The stark reality of it becomes clear  to Greg when Hajar turns up at chez Sophie-Greg with her seriously stern mother.  You do not want to take on this Tunisian woman. The enterprise never loses its comic side, delivering another clever and simultaneously symbolic poke at the avaricious   stunned, rejected, and aggrieved Sophie leaves the luxurious apartment clutching the fake Faberge egg. 

I think I like “The Romanoffs.”   It has no violence. I watch violence in films but only when it makes sense.  Same deal in real life, only there it hardly ever makes sense, though I suppose that’s part of it’s attraction for some people.  Amirite?

Check out “The Romanoffs.”  Only if you’re smart though.

Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week: Senator Patty Murray D-WA

Faulty Reasoning Candidate of the Week is Senator Patty Murray, Democrat, of the state of Washington.  Murray appeared on Sunday’s Meet the Press  with host Chuck Todd. Todd asked for Murray’s opions about the allegations  made by Christine Blasey Ford regarding Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.  This writing is not to discuss the allegations, but to focus on Murray’s weak thought process when answering Todd’s question.

Before asking for her opinion with regard to Ford’s credibility, Todd played two opposing political clips, one of them at odds with Ford’s allegations, the other in sync with it.

When Todd then asked whether Ford could be believed, Murray used some very specious reasoning.  “Well, if a person calls in and says their car is stolen, no one questions that.” 

That’s patently false.  But it’s what a senator in the U.S. Congress professes to believe, and such fecklessness  and/or sophistry scares me.    Senator Murray’s presumption might apply to persons as privileged as she is, but in large part, an allegation of car theft is routinely questioned by authorities in terms of its credibility.

 False reports of car thefts are common.  Criminals pay other criminals to have their cars stolen to collect insurance money. There are many other reasons for false reports of car theft, and authorities have just as much right to question such claims as they have to question Christine Busey Ford’s as yet unfounded accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.

Solid Evidence Lacking in British Spy Poisoning Story

AFP Photo

For months now, Democrats and some Republicans, in their zeal to topple the Trump administration, have been  beating the drum against everything and everyone connected with Russia.  I’m expecting any day now that caviar, borscht, and kvas will soon be subpoenaed in Brighton Beach, by order of Special Prosecutor Mueller.   If  you can indict a ham sandwich then why not borscht?

Anyway, there’s nothing to wax eloquent about regarding these paroxysms of Russophobia.  Suffice it to say that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not apply here.  The British have declared that Russia and Putin have ordered the poisonings of former KGB agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The U.S.  and the rest of the world has been expected to get in line behind the British in putting this crime on   the Russian Federation, and also on Putin’s doorstep. Unless the British or the sabre-rattlers provide something ever remotely resembling proof, there are good reasons for deep skepticism of the British claims.

First of all, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the countries involved suffered through a period of free-for-all where state assets could be bought cheap.  Everything and anything could be bought. A Showtime documentary airing now shows shady underworld characters buying helicopters, motorcycles, and even a submarine at unimaginably low prices. It was like Germany before WWII, even worse.  There was no economy except for foreign dollars. I would expect that somewhere a terrorist or criminal group has some really nasty and deadly material, even including Novochok, which was developed by the Russians. 

Consider the following:

Novochok is not just a single substance. It has several varieties and compositions, with varying lethalities.  Novochok 5 is said to be the deadliest.  All are said to be binary – meaning they need an activator or catalyst to become active.  So now the story is someone activated the substance and put in on the Skripal’s doorknob?  No security cameras operating? No one else (like the postman or a visitor) touched the doorknob?  For how  long would the substance be an effective killer?  I

British first reports virtually swore that the Kripals were poisoned in the park where they were found. Months later, the claim is that a deadly nerve agent was put on the doorknob of their house.  I don’t know how far the park is from the Kripal house but if they were poisoned at the home, and the poison was to be so deadly as to kill almost immediately, how did the Kripals manage a walk in and to the park?  We might get some answers since Yulia Kripal has come out of her coma and is reportedly being interviewed on those matters.

Russia does not deny the nerve agent was developed in a lab of the former Soviet Union.  British security services say it was developed in the town of Shikhany, southeast of Moscow.  The Russians say that their former stocks of chemical weapons were not stored there. "All the bases where chemical weapons were stored are well-known,” says Mikhail Babich, a former chairman of the Kremlin commission for chemical disarmament,

The British newspaper “The Times”  reports   the British defense lab analyzing the nerve agent  could not say for certain the substance came from Russia.  So why are we hearing this now? All of America has been bombarded with news that the British were 100 percent certain the substance came from Russia.  

Several former Russian scientists including Vil Mirzayanov say the Novichok group of nerve agents were invented by scientist Pyotr Kirpichev in Shikhany.  This is very likely true, but that is old news.  Mirzayanov is a welcome defector who has long been living in a million dollar house in ivy-covered Princeton, New Jersey.  The scientist-teacher also said it was difficult to establish where the poison came from.

Vladimir Uglev, one of the chemists who worked on the nerve agent, told one newspaper that components to produce the weapon could be bought in several countries. Isn’t this what happened with nuclear weapons in general?  Once the secrets are out, anyone might be able to get their hands on the formula. Thugs, criminals, terrorist factions, non-state operators, the list is long.

The really dangerous thing about blaming Putin and Russia for the poisoning is that everyone seems to accept the British version as if handed down from God.  And the west is going down this blind alley of sanctions, hostility, revised foreign policy, and accusations without any real evidence?

Why not give the Russians a sample of the substance for their own analysis as they have requested?  We seem to believe Russian scientists are competent only after they have defected. But  why did   the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons bow to political pressure and decline to investigate the matter independently?  That was also requested by the Russians – an independent inquiry. So much for ‘global chemical watchdogs,’ as the organization is described.

Red Sparrow: Jennifer Lawrence with Clipped Speech

The really cool thing about Jennifer Lawrence’s new movie “Red Sparrow” is that you can watch the trailer and get the whole story without paying up.   

There’s no need to discuss the story line, most of which is borrowed from other spy films and TV shows.  Ms. “Red Sparrow” is essentially blackmailed into becoming a double agent. She’d better do it or else her desperately ill mother won’t have a doctor.

Aside from Jennifer Lawrence’s brand name, Jeremy Irons also lends his name and reputation to the project.  At least he can do accents perfectly and change personas as needed. Jennifer Lawrence’s accent, like those of the other Eastern European ‘agents,’ is tortured.  Why didn’t the fillmmakers go whole hog and hire handsome Costa Ronin and the beautiful Anette Mahendru  . Hire Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields – they might be willing to help now that they’ve shot all episodes of what will be “The Americans” last season.

Judging from the trailer “Red Sparrow,” looks like something that resembles a 2018 version of the TV drama “Man From Uncle” or perhaps “I spy.” B 

Fake News Du Jour: Missing Canadian Fireman ‘Found’

 I love these   stories about the “mysterious” disappearance of a person from one place to another, usually far away.  Or rather, I would love them if only they weren’t so expensive and such a waste of precious resources.   The latest fake story comes from a ski resort in upstate New York. 

Worst of all is the way such stories are reported in the media.  With utter gullibility, expecting the same from you.  As if everyone’s taken stupid pills just before reading it in the media.   Or has chronic cognitive-dissonance.

The latest b.s. story of its type (though I’m linking to a Fox News story, it’s been reported wall-to-wall in every kind of media ) concerns Toronto ‘fireman’ Danny Fillippidis, age 49, who supposedly disappeared from New York’s White Face Mountain on a cross-country skiing trip. 

The first stories did not mention Danny was on a cross-country skiing trip where it’s almost impossible to get lost or have a tragic accident especially when you’re with a large number of your firemen buddies.  Okay, you could jump off a cliff if you’re on cross-country skis and, right now, sane people are wishing Danny would do just that.

Instead, he calls his wife from Sacramento CA where he’s supposedly ‘found’ wearing his ski suit and goggles.   I’ve been unable to find just  one eyewitness report of his being ‘located’ with his helmet, goggles,and ski suit on so this is likely either entirely or partially fictional.   Imagine Danny meeting the police who ‘located’ him – after hurriedly dressing in the rest room of a gas station:  “Hey, look at me officer. I’m goofy. It’s 40 degrees out here in Sacramento;  there’s no snow;  and all I can remember is a truck ride in a “big rig,” buying a new I-phone, and getting a haircut. 

Listen to me.  Danny Filippidis pulled a failed stunt, went way out on a limb and didn’t know how to get back from it.  “Hello, it’s me darling,” he says to his wife. “Guess where I’m at?”

All together now, breathe a sigh of relief that this ‘tragedy’ has had a happy ending. And yes, go on with your lives, lucky that it didn’t happen to you.

Journalistic skepticism survives in some places but it’s on life support.