Tradecraft: NBC Renews TAKEN TV Series

Variety reports that NBC has renewed Taken, the TV series based on the hit Liam Neeson movies, for a second season. Though it wasn't a ratings smash, the show proved popular internationally, living up to its neo-Eurospy pedigree. Clive Standen stars as a younger version of Neeson's character, Bryan Mills. A prequel to the films, the first season chronicled Mills' initial recruitment into the CIA. I only saw the pilot and was less than impressed, but if it was popular enough to be renewed, I should probably give it another try. While the first season was only ten episodes (which currently fill up my DVR), the second will be sixteen. Europacorp has a pretty good track record with TV series based on their spy movies. Transporter: The Series (a truly entertaining action show) lasted two seasons, and Luc Besson's 1990 film La Femme Nikita spawned not one but two successful shows to date.

Meet the New Bryan Mills in TAKEN TV Trailer

NBC has provided us with our first glimpse at the new, younger Bryan Mills in the forthcoming Taken TV show. The series, which EuropaCorp's Luc Besson has been developing since 2010, will serve as a prequel to the popular neo-Eurospy movies starring Liam Neeson, with Clive Standen (Vikings) stepping into Neeson's very particular skill set. Homeland's Alexander Cary serves as showrunner, and Jennifer Beals co-stars. Taken: The Series premieres on February 27.

Tradecraft: NBC Orders Taken TV Series

It was way back in 2010 that Luc Besson's neo-Eurospy factory EuropaCorp first announced that it was working on a TV series based on its 2008 hit movie Taken, at the same time that the Transporter TV show was announced. Five years and two Taken movies later, that series is actually happening, at NBC. Deadline reports that the network has put in a straight-to-series order for a Taken prequel series, focusing on a younger Bryan Mills (the now-former agent played by Liam Neeson in the movies) in his CIA days. There is no showruner on board yet, but Besson, who co-wrote all of the movies, will executive produce the series (a role he didn't take on either Nikita or Transporter: The Series), which will be a joint venture between EuropaCorp and Universal Television. Set before Bryan Mills ever married Lenore (Famke Janssen in the movies) and before the couple had their kidnapping-prone daughter Kim, the series will show us how Mills acquired his famous "very particular set of skills" and became the badass known to moviegoers the world over. You're probably doing the math about now and getting excited, as I did, for a spy series set in the final days of the Cold War, but alas, that's not to be. Instead, the Taken series will function as a sort of reboot, bending time to take place today, kind of like EuropaCorp's recent prequel The Transporter Refueled (which was actually inexplicably set in 2010, which is neither before the Jason Statham movies were made nor, obviously, the present).

So when you take away Liam Neeson and you take away Mills' family members getting kidnapped, what, exactly, are you left with in the Bryan Mills character? Quite a lot, actually. In 2008 (or early 2009, when it opened in the United States after playing in Europe), I think audiences were genuinely surprised by the lengths to which Mills went in tracking down his missing daughter. His brutality, when called for, was shocking. (Read my review of the movie here.) He is of the school of Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm (a character very different from Dean Martin's movie version) and 24's Jack Bauer (who also had a kidnapping-prone daughter named Kim), an uncompromising agent capable of anything when the stakes are high enough. It's true that we've seen a lot of such characters on television since 24, but based on audience's familiarity with and goodwill towards Mills from the Neeson incarnation, I think the right showrunner could do something very special with the part on the small screen—even on network television. Other than the contemporary setting, this could just turn out to be the closest thing to the Matt Helm TV series spy fans have been craving for decades.

Tradecraft: Liam Neeson in Talks for Spy Thriller A Willing Patriot

In interviews for each successive action movie he makes (recently Taken 3 and Run All Night), 62-year-old Liam Neeson intimates that he's on the verge of retiring from the genre. But thankfully for his fans, he keeps signing on to new action and spy projects nonetheless. His latest will be A Willing Patriot, for MadRiver Pictures and Hollywood Gang. According to Deadline, Neeson is in "final negotiations" to play a CIA agent racing the clock in a desperate bid to outsmart and capture a terrorist planning an imminent attack in this dark, gritty, violent espionage thriller that the trade describes as "a cat-and-mouse film." I say bring it on! I never get sick of seeing the perpetually cool Neeson in this sort of role, and despite the preponderance of action roles he's taken in the last decade, it's pretty rare for him to play a straight-up spy. Taken's Bryan Mills is a retired CIA agent, and the most recent film in the franchise didn't really have any spy elements in it other than Mills making use of his famous "very particular set of skills" honed in his Agency days. In Run All Night he was a drunken former gangster; in A Walk Among the Tombstones (the best of his recent efforts) he was a formerly drunken private detective; in Nonstop he was a drunken air marshal. Even in Unknown (review here), which was a spy movie, Neeson himself didn't play an agent of any intelligence service. (Nor was he a drunk for whatever reason.) So I look forward to finally seeing the "aging action star"-era Liam Neeson playing an active secret agent. Danish director Martin Zanvliet, who is best known in Europe for his behind-the-curtain show biz dramas like Applause and A Funny Man, but has also helmed the anticipated POW drama Land of Mine, will make his English language debut on A Willing Patriot. Jason Keller (Escape Plan) penned the script. The trade reports that the project was originally developed at Warner Bros., and subsequently moved over to MadRiver. "A wide domestic release deal is expected to be announced during the Cannes Film Festival."

Trailer and Posters: Bryan Mills Returns in Taken 3... or Tak3n

Fox and EuropaCorp have kept a tight lid on plot details of the third Taken movie up until now, but the just-released trailer makes it clear that the franchise is shifting gears.

Liam Neeson still plays former CIA agent Bryan Mills just as tough as ever, but this time nobody gets taken. And he doesn't jet off to any exotic European cities. So is it still a neo-Eurospy movie? Well it's still from Luc Besson's largely European team (which unfortunately includes Olivier Megaton, director of Taken 2, rather than Taken's Pierre Morel), so it's sure to still have his decidedly Euro sensibilities... so if Intrigue in Los Angeles counts as Eurospy, I'd say Taken 3 (or TAK3N, as they seem to be calling it) counts as well. Because the setting this time out is LA. And the inspiration is clearly The Fugitive. Forrest Whitaker plays the Lt. Gerard role, and he and Neeson riff on the famous Ford/Jones "I didn't kill my wife!/I don't care!" conversation. There's even a dripping circular sewer. But originality has never been a prerequisite for a good neo-Eurospy movie, and all in all, this trailer looks pretty damn good! I like the new direction, and it already looks better than the last one. I will, however, be sorry to see the last of Famke Janssen in this series. Taken 3 opens January 9. While the poster slogan certainly carries an air of finality, Neeson wasn't so final in recent interviews, saying that while he didn't want to outstay his welcome, if audiences still want him he'd be open to playing the role again. Before that ever happens, though, we'll get a send-up of the series in the parody Tooken, starring Lee Tergesen (The Americans) and Lauren Stamile (Burn Notice).

Tradecraft: Neeson Signs On for Taken 3

Deadline reports that Liam Neeson "is closing a deal in the vicinity of $20 million" to reprise his role as Bryan Mills, the former CIA agent hero of Taken and Taken 2 in a third film. That will be his biggest payday ever for the unlikely action star at the age of 61. Neeson was originally reluctant to return for a second outing of neo-Eurospy mayhem, but when the sequel grossed a staggering $376 million, a third entry seemed inevitable. (Indeed, Part 2 left the door decidedly open for another follow-up.) I loved the first film. The second wasn't nearly as good, but I still found it quite entertaining. It would be great if Luc Besson's EuropaCorp could lure the first film's director, Pierre Morel, back for the third entry, but his commitment to giving Sean Penn's career its own Taken-style neo-Eurospy jolt in The Gunman probably precludes that possibility. Deadline suggests that Olivier Megaton, who helmed the sequel (as well as the third Transporter movie), is a likely candidate for the third one, too, but no deal is yet in place. Besson and Robert Mark Kamen are once again penning the script, as they did for the first two entries in the series.

CIA Reviews of Spy Books and Movies

In a fascinating piece for The Telegraph, Dead Spy Running author Jon Stock reports on an internal CIA newsletter that publishes reviews by serving Agency officers of popular spy fiction, films and television. (Read an all-review issue from 2009 here.) I found it particularly fascinating to read a pseudonymous CIA psychologist's highly perceptive take on the neo-Eurospy flick Taken (excerpted below) in which she finds some surprisingly relatable content in a ridiculously heightened reality.

Although based on unrealistic operational and relationship scenarios (most of us are not granted the opportunity to fix our damaged family relationships by becoming a one-time hero), the movie touches upon the hidden and quite common fantasy that a person can remedy significant family upheavals resulting from challenging and time-consuming careers or other distractions by ironically employing unique work-related knowledge and skills to rescue the estranged loved ones. Furthermore, Hollywood’s propensity to glorify the world of espionage as dangerously sexy—but hidden from most people living mundane lives—appeals to our fantasies on another level. While at times the world of espionage is indeed both dangerous and exciting, our loved ones tend to find our opaque and mysterious work unpredictable and frustrating—even if in real life our work and the skills we employ are often not all that far removed from those employed by ordinary people in ordinary, fully transparent jobs. In this sense the price Neeson’s character pays in his personal life refers to very real dangers to relationships caused by a covert lifestyle, not to wildly overimagined operational dangers portrayed in the movie.

In the end, therefore, Taken indulges us with fantastic tradecraft, dangerous psychopathic villains, and epic operations and portrayals of awed and grateful family members that have very little connection to reality, yet are very fun to imagine.

The most interesting takeaway for me was how positive most of these reviews are. I would have expected people actually engaged in the business of intelligence to be dismissive and derisive of fantasies like The Bourne Identity, Burn Notice, or Anthony Horowitz's premiere Alex Rider novel, Stormbreaker. But the CIA reviewers enjoyed all of those. Less surprising are their takes on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (read my own review here) and The Hunt For Red October. (There's also a humorous piece in which a number of recent trainees fresh off The Farm review The Recruit. They aren't all so positive.) Anyway, the journal offers a fascinating point of view on popular spy fiction, and is well worth checking out.

And speaking of contemporary spy authors writing about le Carré, you can also read Olen Steinhauer's review of A Delicate Truth at The New York Times.

Movie Review: Taken 2 (2012)

Almost four years after the original Luc Besson-produced, Liam Neeson-starring neo-Eurospy flick Taken (review here) became a surprise hit, a sequel finally arrives. And it delivers pretty much exactly what a Taken sequel needs to deliver. Think of Taken 2 as the Die Hard 2 of the Taken franchise: it adheres to the same basic formula of the original with the slightly diminishing returns inherent in reheating a premise… but does so in such a way as to leave fans of the original satisfied that they have, indeed, just seen another Taken movie. Gone, sadly, is the element of surprise that worked so well for the first film, when anything seemed possible around any corner. (I’ve never seen an audience uniformly gasp and jump in their seats the way they did when Neeson’s character suddenly shot someone in the arm unexpectedly.) That’s not really possible the second time around. So what we’re left with instead is the other thing that drove the original: Liam Neeson being a badass in a foreign city. And when the city is as photogenic as Istanbul is, that’s enough for me.

This is, of course, the first of two major spy movies taking advantage of Istanbul’s scenic minarets this fall. (Three if you count a brief scene in Argo.) We will see those same inviting rooftops play host once more to an exciting chase sequence in Skyfall, as we’ve seen them do countless times before, and it never gets old for me. Istanbul is one of my very favorite spy locations, lovingly photographed in genre entries as diverse as Bond movies From Russia With Love and The World Is Not Enough, Eurospy titles like Fury on the Bosphorous and From Istanbul, Orders to Kill, actual Turkish spy films like Golden Boy, and neo-Eurospy entries like The International. I’m happy to report that the ancient city uniquely bridging East and West is well-utilized in Taken 2 (though sadly Neeson never threatens to “tear down the Topkapi Palace” if he has to).

The movie’s plot is a direct continuation of the first film… though not so direct that you couldn’t pick it up easily enough not having seen that one. After former CIA agent Bryan Mills (Neeson) used his “unique skill set” to save his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from Albanian sex traffickers in Paris, Kim has returned to her home in Beverly Hills and tried to get on with her life. Thus we begin, per formula, with the same sort of cheesy domestic scenes that began the first movie, but they’re far less excruciating this time—even enjoyable. That can mainly be credited to Grace. If there were a Golden Globe for “Most Improved,” Maggie Grace would surely win it hands-down! No doubt slightly embarrassed being a 29-year-old playing a 16-year-old, in the first film she overcompensated by playing Kim like she was 8. Not this time. Now (perhaps thanks to her experience playing a full-grown heroine in another Besson-produced neo-Eurospy flick, Lockout), Kim is a functioning adult. (Well, teenager. She still hasn’t passed her driving test.)

Bryan, meanwhile, is making some inroads with his ex-wife, Lenore (Famke Janssen, looking every bit as stunning as she did in GoldenEye 17 years ago), after her rich-guy husband (24’s Xander Berkeley, not present in the sequel) left her. Bryan proposes that his ex and daughter meet him in Istanbul for a vacation when he’s finished up a 4-day private security job. And that, of course, proves to be a bad idea. (The Taken movies might be the first anti-tourist spy movies, insinuating that whenever Americans travel abroad, they inevitably get targeted by sex traffickers and their families! I actually know some women forever put off Parisian vacations by the first film.) Istanbul is too close for comfort, it turns out, to Albania, where a little village mourns the loss of many sons (all awful, evil criminals—but no matter) slain by Mills in the first film. Chief pallbearer is grieving father Rade Sherbedgia (The Saint, 24, M:I-2), and whenever he shows up there’s bound to be trouble. Sherbedgia’s character, Murad Krasniqi, leads a small army, like pigs to slaughter, on a road trip down to Turkey to have their revenge on Mills and his family.

Luckily, when Bryan and Lenore are, ahem, taken (after a rousing pursuit through the city’s old world streets and bazaars), Kim is back at the hotel hanging out by the pool. This enables Bryan, through some ingenuity learned in the CIA, to secretly contact her and instruct her on how to find the location where her parents are being held. His circuitous plan involves Kim throwing hand grenades all over Istanbul (don’t ask), but it’s suitably filmic and fun to watch—and it works! The film’s best scenes involve Mills and his daughter teaming up to save Lenore. Whether Bryan is talking Kim through a rooftop foot chase over a cell phone or shouting driving instructions at her during a high-speed car chase through the labyrinthine streets of Istanbul, the high-octane father/daughter bonding adds a welcome new dimension to the Taken formula.

The biggest disappointment compared to the first film comes from the action sequences. While I’ve enjoyed a number of Olivier Megaton’s films, he doesn’t have Pierre Morel’s gift for directing fights and chases in a lightning-paced manner that still enables viewers to always know exactly what’s going on. Instead (here more than in Colombiana or Transporter 3, unfortunately), Megaton and his editors fall back on that oh-so-popular zeitgeist crutch of cutting the fights up so rapidly so as to render them incomprehensible—seemingly in an attempt to disguise the fact that they weren’t shot very dynamically to begin with. Megaton’s perfectly adept with car chases and firefights, but resorts to that stroby fast-cutting to cover up the shortcomings in Taken 2’s mano-a-many-mano fight scenes. That’s a shame, because audiences want to see Liam Neeson being the badass we know him to be from the first film unencumbered by such gaudy distractions.

The directing doesn’t live up to the first film, but the surprisingly solid script makes the most of delivering a new storyline within the confines of the established series formula. The exotic setting is top-notch, Neeson is as good as ever, Grace is dramatically better than before, and there’s more Famke Janssen, which is always a good thing. The sequel also benefits from a more clearly defined villain to root against, and milks some considerable humor from the previously grating domestic scenes. (There’s almost as much anticipation in seeing how the world’s most overprotective dad will react to his daughter’s new boyfriend as how he will save his ex-wife from being slowly bled to death while suspended upside-down!) All-in-all, Taken 2 is a sequel that delivers the expected goods, and should appeal to fans of the original and fans of the neo-Eurospy genre at large.

Another New Taken 2 Poster

Last week we saw the international poster for Taken 2; today the Imp Awards reveal the U.S. 1-sheet for the Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy sequel. This one hasn't got that succinct tagline, but it still manages to say pretty much all there is to say about this eagerly anticipated film with just one stark image.

Taken 2 Trailer

We just saw the first poster; now Yahoo! has the first international trailer for Taken 2! It looks like Luc Besson and his team (including returning co-writer Robert Mark Kamen and new director Olivier Megaton) are sticking closely to a formula that proved successful the first time around: the cheesy daughter dialogue before the action kicks in ("Isn't Dad the best dad?"), the phone call where Liam Neeson's ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills gives his daughter very precise instructions... and then Mills doing "what I do best" (as he puts it here) and kicking a whole lot of ass. Works for me! (In fact, just about any movie with a chase across Istanbul rooftops works for me. I'm there!) Taken 2 opens October 4.

Read my review of Taken (2009) here.

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Tradecraft: Who Gets Taken in Taken 2

Ever since we first heard there would be a sequel to the 2008 Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy hit Taken (review here), the big question has been who will get taken this time? It would be pretty weak if former CIA agent Bryan Mills' daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace), got randomly snatched yet again the next time she traveled to a foreign country on her own! (And pretty unlikely that her dad would even allow her to take such a trip, for that matter, having found his crazy over-protectiveness fully justified.) Happily, that won't be happening. The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog has the first plot synopsis I've seen for the sequel in an article about the casting of ubiquitous Russian bad guy Rade Sherbedgia (The Saint, Mission: Impossible II, 24) as the villain of the piece. (Of course he is!) According to the trade blog, "Sherbedgia will play Murad, the father of a kidnapper slain by Bryan Mills (Neeson) in the first film. Murad is described as a vengeful man who gives orders and doesn't take them. When Murad takes Mills and his wife hostage, their daughter is enlisted to help save them." Hm. Well, I was hoping that Famke Janssen (GoldenEye) would get to play a larger role in the second film, and assuming she's the wife in question (the couple were divorced in the first movie), I guess she will. The part that surprises me is the notion of Kim rescuing Bryan. I'm assuming that Bryan will find plenty of ways to kick ass on his own, even in captivity. (Die Hard-style?) But I can't quite wrap my head around Maggie Grace in an expanded action role. She was by far the weakest link in the first film. But she was good on Lost, so we know she's capable of better. The biggest problem with her part in Taken was that she was required to play seventeen at twenty-five, and over-compensated by playing Kim as if she were twelve. Hopefully in this one, given that some time has passed, Kim will be allowed to have grown up a bit. Perhaps producer Luc Besson was so impressed with Grace's performance in his upcoming Guy Pearce neo-Eurospy actioner Lockout that he decided to expand her part? We'll find out when Lockout opens next April. Taken 2, as reported earlier this week, will open Columbus Day weekend 2012, written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Colombiana's Olivier Megaton. The action takes place in Istanbul.

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Tradecraft: Taken 2 in October '12

Deadline reports that the eagerly anticipated and long-in-the-works neo-Eurospy sequel Taken 2 will open in North America on October 5, 2012—Columbus Day weekend. I had figured that Fox would want to open the action follow-up in the same January frame in which the original movie performed so well, but happily we will not have to wait until Q1 2013; instead we can expect more Liam Neeson badassery in slightly less than a year! As previously reported, Taken 2 will film in the classic Eurospy location of Istanbul under the direction of Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana), with a script by the writers of the first film, Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Read my review of Taken here.

Blu-Ray Review: Unknown (2011)

The theatrical marketing campaign for Unknown was determined to convince audiences that it was Taken in Berlin. While I can see why Warner Brothers would be keen to piggyback on that massive hit with the same star in a similar European setting, ultimately I think the comparison did their movie a disservice. Unknown is not Taken 2, and fans expecting the sort of non-stop action and ass-kicking that that movie delivered probably came away disappointed. But Unknown is a very tight Euro-thriller in its own right; it’s just a mystery with action rather than an action movie with a mystery. And when the action comes, it’s handled very well by director Jaume Collet-Serra; you can always tell exactly what’s going on and the sequences manage to be impressive while not being flashy or over-edited.

Screen captures reflect DVD picture, not Blu-ray

Neeson plays Dr. Martin Harris, an American biologist scheduled to give a lecture at a conference in Berlin. January Jones (X-Men: First Class) plays his wife, Liz, who accompanies him on the trip. As she’s checking in at their hotel, he realizes that he left his briefcase with all his lecture notes at the airport and hops in a cab to go back. The cab, driven by a Bosnian refugee and illegal immigrant named Gina (Diane Kruger), gets into a horrific accident and plunges into a river. Martin is knocked unconscious, but Gina pulls him out—then disappears. He awakes three days later in a hospital. He had no identification on him, so the doctors didn’t know who he was or who to contact. He’s also got partial amnesia, a convenient device for which a doctor handily explains, “There are no rules for severe trauma of this sort. Memories get lost or fractured. Most of them return, although it’s unlikely you’ll ever fully recall the events around your accident.” Luckily, Martin does recall Liz, and he immediately rushes to the hotel to see his wife, who he assumes will be freaking out not knowing where he’s been. When he finds her, however, she seems not to recognize him. Indeed, when he claims to be her husband, she introduces another man (Aidan Quinn) as her husband—the real Dr. Martin Harris. He’s even got a passport to back him up. What’s going on?

The premise (highly reminiscent of the 1969 Roger Moore movie The Man Who Haunted Himself, by the way) seemed preposterous enough that I figured there was no way the filmmakers could provide a satisfactory resolution to their intriguing mystery, but happily I was wrong. That they do ultimately pull that off (one that’s not merely satisfactory, in fact, but satisfying—and surprising!) is no small accomplishment.

Unknown begins with an impressively fast set-up. Collet-Serra and screenwriters Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwell (who, interestingly, is the son of David Cornwell, better known as John Le Carré!) convey all of the necessary exposition very quickly, then launch right into the plot. (I haven’t read Didier Van Cauwelaert’s novel Out of My Head, so I have no idea how faithful the movie is to its source material.) Just a few minutes into the film, we’re already familiar with the primary characters, their situation and the setting. Despite the expediency of the set-up, Collet-Serra still has time for some great wintery Berlin scenery, which serves not only as pleasing eye candy, but also helps set the tone of the movie. All of this unfolds beneath some very stylish credits. The credits are representative, in fact, of the film to come. They aren’t especially showy David Fincher-type credits, and they don’t comprise a spectacular mini-film in their own right the way Bond titles do, but they’re classy and good looking.

Even while taking the time to give us all the scenic shots I crave as Martin and Liz ride in a taxi from the airport to their hotel (as any good Eurospy movie should), Collet-Serra still manages to plunge fully into the plot by just seven minutes in when Martin is in his accident. The accident itself is well choreographed and well shot. Like the credits, the stunt isn’t too fancy; it happens simply and straightforwardly, and you can actually tell what’s going on, actually see the physics of it in action, something I vastly prefer to the post-Bourne quick-cut nonsense of Quantum of Solace, where brief shaky-cam glimpses of cars cut quickly together manage to convey that a crash has occurred, but don’t let us see how.

Martin’s predicament quickly worsens when he becomes aware (in the course of a very suspenseful scene in the hospital) that mysterious assassins are trying to kill him. The only one who might be able to help him is the taxi driver, Gina, but she’s disappeared. Luckily, Martin’s resourceful enough to track her down. Diane Kruger is at her most appealing as Gina, and in the tradition of the genre going back at least as far as The 39 Steps, Martin quickly gets her mixed up in his deadly situation even though she’s completely innocent, and inadvertantly brings death to her doorstep. Suddenly the two are thrust together on an adventure that takes them through rave clubs (the post-Alias equivalent of the old Eurospy nightclub scene, replete with house music, flashing colored lights and blue-haired, pierced beauties—an environment in which Liam Neeson seems very out of place!) and the snowy streets of Berlin in a breakneck car chase. It’s not Bullitt, but once again, you can follow the action, tell what’s going on. And the inevitable resulting crash even involves cable cars on tracks! (That’s exactly the sort of thing I want to see in any Europe-set spy movie worth its salt.)

The chase might have made a bit more sense if Kruger were driving instead of Neeson, since she’s a local taxi driver who would both know the streets and presumably how to drive better than he does… but oh well. (She does get her own—admittedly less spectacular—car chase later.) The filmmakers were clearly thinking that Neeson needed an action scene at this point; he is, after all, the hero. Fans waiting for any Taken-style ass-kicking, however, will have to wait until the halfway mark for Neeson to finally fight someone—a spectacled assassin who’s been following him. It’s a good brawl, but since this character is a Hitchcockian Everyman caught up in a wild conspiracy instead of a trained operative like Bryan Mills, his style of fighting isn’t nearly so badass.

German actor Bruno Ganz steals the movie as an old Stassi agent with no regrets who now operates as a private detective. At the recommendation of a nurse, Martin turns to him for help. His character, Jürgen, could be right out of one of Stephen Cornwell’s dad’s books. In the movie’s best scene, a summit of sorts between two old Cold Warriors still dabbling in their trade, Jürgen is asked, “Why did you take his case?”

“Curiosity,” he replies.

“Is that all?”

“There’s not much in this world left to interest an old spy like me,” says Jürgen, invoking that favorite Le Carré theme of the old spy who can’t stop spying.

When Martin finally arrives at a solution to his the genuinely perplexing predicament (thanks to the aid of Jürgen and Gina), it actually surprised me. What surprised me more than the solution itself was the fact that it actually works—more or less. Sure there are a few loose ends that aren’t entirely explained, but overall, it works, and it’s not something that I’ve seen before exactly (though it’s a clever variation on an old plot spy fans have seen a lot).

Overall, spy fans will find a lot to please them in Unknown. It offers a great genre star in a great genre setting (one of the classic spy movie locations, too long unused!), cinematography that makes the most of both, cool chases and crashes involving cable cars, beautiful women, a top-notch supporting cast (which also includes cool turns by Frank Langella and The Lives of Others’ Sebastian Koch in small parts) and even some clever nods to genre antecedents as disparate as Le Carré, Ludlum and Mission: Impossible. (There’s an unexpected variation on Jim Phelps’ traditional briefing of his team toward the end.) Best of all, it offers all of these elements in a tight story that packs some genuine and satisfying twists. I could think of plenty of worse ways for a spy fan to pass a few hours.

The presentation on Warner’s Blu-ray is unimpeachable, boasting a fantastic transfer that showcases that nice cinematography, low-key action and fantastic Berlin locations to their maximum advantage. The extras, however, leave a little to be desired. There are only two on the Blu-ray, and only one on the DVD—but DVD viewers aren’t really missing anything. There’s enough overlap in the things that these two very brief EPK pieces cover that you don’t even need to see them both. The BD exclusive, “Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero,” is basically a very short piece with people saying nice things about Liam Neeson… but I can’t begrudge it that, because who doesn’t like seeing nice things said about Liam Neeson? The most interesting anecdote comes from Neeson himself, who recounts a story about when he used to box and once got knocked out and came to briefly not remembering who or where he was. That (very short) run-in with amnesia made him feel like he had a handle on this character.

The unimaginatively titled “Unknown: What is Known?” is just as short, and even repeats some of the same beats on Neeson as the other featurette. Happily, it does contain some brief sound bites from just about everyone involved in the production: producer Joel Silver, director Collet-Serra and all the actors (even Germans Ganz and Koch)… but not the writers! I want to see the junior Cornwell! Oh well. (There was also too much January Jones and not enough Diane Kruger.) Neeson and Aiden Quinn repeat a bit from the other featurette about being old friends, and consequently enjoying their drag-out fight scene together. Silver points out that you shouldn’t see the twist coming, but when it does it will make sense, and I have to admit, he’s right. And that's the reason you should check out Unknown on disc, not because of these lackluster EPK featurettes!

Unknown, out June 21, is now available to own now on Blu-ray, DVD and Blu-ray/DVD Combo. Learn more about the release on Warner Bros.’ official website.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: The Unknown Saint of Monte Carlo

I was going to lead this week's new DVD roundup with Warner Bros.' Unknown, but then the studio trumped themselves at the last minute by announcing a new collection of long-awaited Saint movies via The Warner Archive!  The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection includes all five of the RKO Saint films Sanders starred in between 1939 and '41: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint in Palm Springs.  The trouble with collecting Sanders' Saint outings is that it means omitting the four films starring Luis Hayward (my favorite of the RKO Saints) and Hugh Sinclair. And Hayward starred in the first of the Leslie Charteris adaptations, The Saint in New York. But hopefully those films will see release in a future collection. There's plenty of good news here to focus on!  Warner representatives promised way back in 2007 that all of the RKO Saint films would see release in 2008. That didn't happen, and it was about that time that the bottom fell out of the catalog DVD market entirely, so it seemed as if it would never happen.  Then the studio began its Warner Archive MOD program, producing DVD-Rs of classic films on demand, which started a trend and salvaged the catalog business.  It seemed inevitable that the Saint movies would pop up eventually as MODs, but even then the studio dragged its feet.  And now that these five have arrived, it seems like fans are actually better off for the delay. Instead of releasing each title individually for twenty bucks apiece, as they did with the Tarzan series, Warner are bundling five movies together for just $29.95.  That's a much better bargain!  (Very reasonable, actually.) I really hope that we see the remaining Saint titles (including the elusive final film in the RKO cycle, The Saint's Girl Friday, which was co-produced by Britain's Hammer Studios and saw Hayward return to the role he originated more than a decade later) soon in another such collection.  But for now, I'm very content to have these ones at long last!  So far The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection is available only directly through The Warner Archive, but it will assuredly pop up on Amazon and Deep Discount in a couple of months.

Also out from Warner Home Video today, in much wider release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo, is this year's Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy romp, Unknown. I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool thriller in its own right, though!  The wintery Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) Extras, unfortunately, are pretty scarce on both releases. The BD includes the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film; to the undoubted ire of those without Blu-ray players, the DVD includes only the first featurette.  DVD buyers shouldn't worry, though.  They're really not missing out on anything.  Both EPK featurettes are extremely brief, and despite that brevity still manage to cover some of the same ground. Still, this movie is worthwhile even without good bonus material. If you missed Unknown in theaters, definitely give it a try on disc. I'll be posting a full review shortly. Own it on Blu-ray for $35.99 (or just $22.99 currently from Amazon) or DVD for $28.99 (or just $14.99 from Amazon right now).

Finally, Olive Films, who have licensed a lot of cool catalog titles from Paramount, bring us the 1986 WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD today. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be had for slightly less on Amazon.

In addition to Monte Carlo, Olive has one more Joan Collins miniseries out today that might interest spy fans, though it's not itself a spy story. Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is notable here because it co-stars Timothy Dalton (immediately prior to becoming Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP of $39.99.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Unknown

Warner Bros. has announced the Liam Neeson amnesia thriller Unknown for release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo on June 21. According to DVD Active, extras on the BD will include the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film.  In the interest of unfairness, the DVD will only offer the first featurette.  I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool neo-Eurospy movie in its own right, though!  The Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and car crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) If you missed Unknown in theaters, give it a try on DVD.