Dispatches From Noir

RIP Andy Griffith, 1926-2012

I grew up laughing at the antics in Mayberry, but Andy Griffith was probably at his best in this almost-film-noir directed by Elia Kazan.  Engaging, sinister and brilliantly prescient, A Face in the Crowd shows that Andy Griffith’s range as an actor was never really utilized on TV. 

In 1957, a demagogic entertainer was considered remarkable.  Today, Lonesome Rhodes would have his own cable news show.

As I’ve said before, Blade Runner is sci-fi.  But the film’s film noir influences are prominent.  So I’m kicking back and enjoying the movie this weekend.

And I would be remiss if I discussed Blade Runner without addressing the debate.  What do you say, geeky tumblchums?  Is Deckard a replicant?  

In last night’s Sleepyhead, a smug doctor scoffs at DI Tom Thorne’s serve-and-protect mission.  ”That allows you to act like a prick?” the doctor asks.  If you didn’t infer the answer from last night’s installment, Scaredy Cat answers the question tonight.  Yes, it does.  Once again, David Morrissey is winsomely prickly as Mark Billingham’s DI Thorne.

In Thorne: Scaredy Cat, our hero is every bit the avenging angel that he was in Sleepyhead.  Like many rogue cops and hardboiled mavericks before him, DI Tom Thorne is dismissive of police regulations, his superiors and even most rules of polite conduct.  But he’s driven to find the bad guys.  Fortunately for London, Thorne is assigned the most perplexing cases—villains a more polite detective might not be able to track down.

In Scaredy Cat, the police are once again baffled by a serial killer—or, Thorne suspects, by two.  Pairs of murders are being perpetrated with the same murder weapons, but one is savage and the other more precise and clinical.  Thorne is sure the pairs of murders are connected.

Part of what follows is predictable.  Thorne is overbearing, takes risks, is second-guessed by his superiors but eventually solves the case.  But the genius of Scaredy Cat, like Sleepyhead last night, lies in the psychological curveballs that the show throws at viewers.  This episode seems to tip its hand early, but  Scaredy Cat adroitly serves up red herrings while slowly aspects of the eventual conclusion.  

Sandra Oh is a good addition to the cast as DS Sara Chen.  As with Thorne, the sometimes grisly job seems to weigh on Chen.  Thorne copes by being a prick.  Chen needs cocaine and spontaneous sex.  While we see the self-destructiveness Chen is now in, she isn’t a very developed character, and we don’t know why she’s using cocaine in the first place.  It would be nice to see more of Aidan Gillen (Tommy Carcetti in The Wire) as medical examiner Phil Hendricks—Thorne’s sounding board and the only character who cal tell him off.

Taken together, both Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat rely on the continuing effects of childhood trauma as an explanation for serial killings down the line.  Not being familiar with the Mark Billingham novels upon which the Thorne series are based, I can’t say whether this is unique to the first two, or recurs throughout the series.  But the themes—dysfunctional identity, childhood flashbacks, broken relationships, compulsion to kill—remind me of a more violent (and perhaps less Freudian) Ross Macdonald.  

But watch Thorne: Sleepyhead and Thorne: Scaredy Cat, and judge for yourself.  These are excellent procedurals-cum-thrillers.  David Morrissey’s downbeat magnetism will draw you in, and the piercing suspense will keep you watching.

Full disclosure: I haven’t read Sleepyhead, the Mark Billingham book upon which this miniseries was based.  I actually have it.  Picked it up just last week, before I knew the two Thorne miniseries would be airing this week.  It was a fortuitous acquisition, though, and I’m keen to read it after seeing Thorne: Sleepyhead.

Thorne: Sleepyhead and Thorne: Scaredy Cat were shown on the UK’s Sky1 in 2010. But American cable channel Encore is giving Thorne its American premiere this week.  Originally miniseries, each installment is being shown on Encore as a single telefilm of slightly over two hours.  I just finished watching Sleepyhead, and I was blown away.

At the start, you might be forgiven for thinking that Thorne was another police procedural.  Just a grittier Masterpiece Mystery.  But it is far more.  While I can’t speak for the second installment, Sleepyhead blends hardboiled police procedural with psychological and medical thriller to brilliant effect.

In Sleepyhead, DI Tom Thorne begins on familiar ground: trying to track down a seeming serial murderer.  But one of the killer’s victims didn’t die.  She survived, but is subsequently afflicted with “locked-in syndrome” and can only move her eyes.  Thorne seems all to familiar at the outset, as well.  Defiant hardboiled cop, haunted by a case involving a previous killer and dismissive of protocol and propriety in his quest to apprehend the killer.  

But here’s where Sleepyhead’s multiple layers become apparent, and everything becomes much more complex.  Thorne: Sleepyhead is exquisitely paced, and the suspense is riveting.  The acting is top-notch, and Sara Lloyd-Gregory is especially memorable as the locked-in patient.  She’s allowed only minimal movement or expression, but the voice-overs poignantly convey her character’s personality shining through the frustration.  

Granted the romance between Thorne and Doctor Anne Coburn is more obligatory than organic, and isn’t very convincing.  But that’s a minor quibble.  DI Thorne spends most of his time as avenging angel, not amourist.  And he is compelling in the former role, if not the latter.  As Thorne, David Morrissey wears the burden of past cases and current pressures.  Alternating between weariness and urgency, Thorne makes us feel the weight on his own shoulders.

I’ll be watching the next installment, Thorne: Scaredy Cat, tomorrow evening.  I highly recommend it to you as well, and I’ll post a review after seeing it tomorrow. 

The most highly regarded of postwar British films noir, The Third Man strikes me as quite Chandleresque (Chandlerian?).  Holly Martens (a pulp scribe not unlike Chandler several decades earlier) puts the clues together slowly, but this film isn’t about detection.  Like Chandler’s novels, The Third Man delivers atmosphere (though Graham Greene’s plot is better than Chandler’s usually were).  The cinematography is beguiling, unnerving—and positively gorgeous.

I wouldn’t call this a neo-noir, but it’s closer to Highsmith’s noir writing than (the beautiful travelogue) The Talented Mr. Ripley.  I also prefer Malkovich’s much more calculating Ripley to Damon’s by a long shot.

Is this noir?  I don’t think so, though I’m not sure what isn’t neo-noir anymore.  It’s a hell of a film, regardless.

Leslie Charteris’ florid pulp creation has been brought to life a number of times.  Roger Moore is one of the best remembered.  Indeed, Moore is arguably better as Simon Templar than as James Bond.  Vendetta for the Saint was initially two episodes of the Saint television show in which Moore starred.  The episodes, based on the novel of the same name, were spliced into a movie when was then released in cinemas.  

The novel was ghostwritten by sci-fi novelist Harry Harrison, though Charteris edited Harrison’s manuscript significantly to put his own stamp on the final product.  The movie is a more or less straightforward adaptation of Harrison’s story.  The guest stars are not likely to impress anyone, nor are the action scenes.

But the Vendetta for the Saint has Moore.  He exudes urbanity and devil-may-care wit.  His shortcomings as an action hero are unsatisfactory to modern eyes accustomed to Jason Bourne or Daniel Craig as Bond.  But if one does not like pulp escapism, one should not be watchingThe Saint (a fact that somehow eluded makers of the feature film starring Val Kilmer).  The Saint was always a foppish but roguish pulp hero.  With the possible exception of Vincent Price on the radio, no one has been better at portraying Simon Templar than Roger Moore.