Reviews

We can only guess what prompted the decision to kill off Dr. Beckett in all the sudden, what merely caused an outcry of the in fan community and did not contributed to the story line at all. Was it about the character or about the actor, we often have to ask ourselves than, knowing the many rumors about the harsh office live in the studios...

Nathan James can be mysteriously disabled after being hit a puny water mine. Computers down, weapons down, engines dead. Yea, right. This kind of 'action' is good only for Startrek type of Alien-Tech encounter. But later even a missile hit, with a huge explosion leaves merely a "6 inch hole" and no apparent adverse effects. Yea right, again.

Meanwhile Capt. Chandler, now living in Greece anonymously, decides to join a villain who terrorizes local fishermen, and steals their catch. However, it shows quickly that the bad guy is in fact a James-Bond like villain, with a beautiful woman in tow of course, who likes to arrange naked fist fights. Naturally, Chandler proves to be a super-boxer and fighter, who beats opponents into submission. And he gets the girl for personal nights of passion, which he suffers only to enter the secret office in a flamboyant villa overlooking a blue Aegeyan Sea.

God have mercy, we waited so long for this season to get ...this?

Great entertainment: Since our protagonist did not die in the first Mechanic movie (as opposed to the original 1972 classic with Charles Bronson), we are open to sequels. Good so. This could be the next Bond movie: Our Mechanic operates in spectacular environment, great vistas all along. He has seemingly unlimited financial reserves, and a plethora of gadgets. The villains are also formidable, equally well equipped, and like in a good Bond movie: They die a spectacular death, Mechanic gets the girl.

Stunts are great, so are the fight scenes. Opening resembles almost the Moonraker! This is hands down the best action thriller of recent time. Please continue! And explain it to the new Bond crew how to make a good action entertainment, they lost their ways.

It shows that even a producer of a caliber of one Donald Bellisario can make an awful production, literally insulting intelligence of this viewer. And probably the majority of viewers saw it similarly, when I consider that Studios pulled the plug after one season.

This show was made amid of the successful Magnum P.I. Don Bellisario later made the landmark series JAG and the current excellent NCIS. I feel happy that he came to senses, recovered and let his talent and ingenuity flourish.

Much of the Magnum cast appears in Monkey's pilot: Jeff McKay, one of our favorite characters from Magnum (Lt. MacReynolds, later returned to Magnum as a "con man extraordinaire Jim Bonnik." Marta DuBois (Magnum's wife Michelle) appears as a Japanese princess of kinds. John Hillerman, main character in Magnum "Jonathan Q. Higgins" appears here also as a vicious gestapo agent "Fritz the Monocle," who as expected will find his untimely death. Alongside appear a series of Asian actors, whom we also saw on more than one occasion in Magnum episodes.

Let me briefly summarize the pilot, a good representative of what type of a show this was: Two Germans, of course portrait in a stereotype way of vicious and cowardly, stupider than a regular adult person ever could be, stand at a waterfall and see a huge ape on the other side. Huge Gorilla of sorts, like in a Planet of the Apes, expect for a childish (party?) costume. We know later that the Germans are 'scientists.' For some reason one of the Germans opens fire at the (noble) ape. The ape is not easy to kill, it attacks! It takes a lot of yelling and shooting until the ape finally dies. Other apes appear and make a short process of the Germans. Hurray.

In another scene Princess Koji (Marta DuBuis) sits naked in a Japanese Onzen Bath, and a Japanese samurai tries to grab a red cord tied to a neck of a cobra as a test of courage. A German agent visits the princess. The German is extremely cowardly, scared to death of the cobra, sweats and shakes, what amuses everybody. I was not amused, neither was my wife, who said at some time "I am finished with the show," and did not wanted to watch it any longer. Later in the episode we see the German agent pretending to be a local reverend, seducing a local, pretty and yet stereotypically stupid native girl Tiki. So what it is about? Legend wants, on the volcanic Island with the Apes exists a statue, a gold one of course, and that alloy is so resilient to heat that Germans are after it. Fritz the Monocle, who won dog's Jake glass eye in a poker game, worth $100,000 as they said on the table, is dressed as a German navy officer and is on the mission to find the Island of the Apes and get the statue. The rest of the details are kind of irrelevant, get the DVD if you must see. Suffice to say, bad guys die, good guys win, French womanize, but are good otherwise, Germans are bad. Japanese are also bad, but in a knightly "samurai" kind of way, whereas Germans are ridiculous and cowardly. Visual effects are embarrassing, especially the volcanic eruption on the Island of the Apes looked like an apprentice job.

Poor Jeff MacKey! For this role of a mechanic Corky his character on Magnum has died in season 3! Corky as a character fades into another stereotype: simple minded, always dirty, unshaven, looking for a bottle and yet a good trusty fellow. Jeff was lucky to return to Magnum in season 5 as Jim Bonnik, and his extraordinary talent showed fully in this role.

Monkey seemed to have been filmed in Tahiti and on Oahu, we clearly recognized Bora Bora, called here Gora Bora. Standing joke in the show is that dog Jake makes "woof" for yes, and "woof woof" for no, or is it the other way around? This seem to lead to a never ending series of confusion.

The 'mark' in this episode of Hustle is a ruthless, truth bending, cynical and despicable editor in chief of one of the British tabloids.

One of most enduring secrets in contemporary Europe is how a proud nation, such as the British, can have such a morally despicable tabloid press? How this social phenomenon is possible, considering the in England typical high moral claims about themselves? Remember the "be British" self proclaimed slogan? Do not count on it in Britain's press. Not only "gentlemen" is a term introduced worldwide, so is "hooligan," "rowdy" or... "grifter," for that matter.

Under such circumstances sympathies of the viewers are clearly with our con-man team. They came out with an elaborate story involving royal family, which they hope to get published in the tabloid. Of course, they also know how to later discredit the story, and make some money in the process. The tabloids are so hated in Britain, that even the MI5 helps in the execution of the con's most difficult trick, which appears to provide the irrefutable, hard proof to the editor of the tabloid. In the end it takes however Mickey Bricks "plan B" to get some money for the trick, which is being than in a best Robin Hood fashion donated to a charity.

This is one of the best Hustle episodes. The storyline is suspenseful. It is fascinating is to watch the replays of the crucial scenes with the "dots filled in." As always, a first time viewer will be stunned how the same scenes can tell a different story and explain what has really happened.

This is how we like Hustle: High stakes, sophisticated and so stunningly plausible in the detail.

As the series progressed, it became apparent that the writers could not provide yet another "con" of the same quality for each episode... The pressure to produce ultimately takes its toll on even best of the breed writers and producers.

This episode is an example of this syndrome. Our intrepid team is performing one of the famous "long cons" on a shadowy character from Australia. They escape with the money as usual, but following the con the team is arrested on a faked narcotics charges. Apparently a famed star police detective was watching them and was able to perform his own "con": Somehow he had an identical case available, filled it with kilograms of heroine and switched it miraculously at an unknown point of time. Our team is forced to help him to apprehend a slippery 'super brain' thieve.

So far so good, but there begins the part of the story in which the entire plot reduces itself to simplistic or not plausible events. While being held in prison hostage, Albert becomes an easy access to the evidence storage, can exchange many kilograms of bags with white powder, can open a police safe and remove money from it. The team lands nights... using parachutes on a lit lawn of a high security estate, with guards and dogs walking along the fence perimeter. Of course, the dogs do not hear or smell anything of the entire commotion... Really? Meanwhile Stacey appears at the gate to make a "my card broke" type of diversion, and the guard is stupid enough to leave the gate open for Ash to sneak in and to work his voodoo on finding out passwords for the alarm system. When the guard will back off, Stacey hits him into unconsciousness with a single blow of her Panzer Hand.

I think this says it all, its absurd all along. The finish is equally weak. This is not the "Hustle" as we know it otherwise. But considering the number of most stunning episodes, we shall forgive them for making one even so weak conceived!

This time our team is under a difficult test: A tipped off corrupt police officer identifies and arrests Danny and Mikey. They quickly understood that she wants them to perform the next con, but the proceeds should go to her. The mark is a collector of historic comic book drawings. In a typical Hustle manner, Mikey's team turns the table on the police officer, and the way how they did it is indeed quite elaborate and so twisted that viewer cannot really guess what will happen. Suspense at its best, I grant that.

However, in two cases the plot will be helped by very simple conceived events, and here the storyline disappoints. In one case they obtain a key to a storage locker in a bank by bumping into her and letting her drop the key. Would you be really losing such a key so easy? In another case, as she gets the 100 thousand pounds check, she is made to keep it in an external large pocket of her purse and walk so down the street with this pocket on the outside! This is quite naive. Everybody would have put such valuable check in an internal safe pocket, with zipper for example.

Obviously, the writer could not find a better, so to speak less naive way of accomplishing these two for the con vital elements in the puzzle. In fact, the team needed not the locker key, but merely the number of the locker. Maybe a mike placed in her purse would do the trick? They could have listened to her asking for the key. And later on, I expected rather a "hustle quality" purse switch, and not a "bump into her" trick with a 100 thousand pounds check sticking out for the world to be picked...

Its a pity, because other than that, the fine nuances of the con were very well conceived. She was indeed a sitting duck. She believed to be in control and she never saw what hit her. Her conduct was so bad, that viewer feels well when she gets a taste of her own medicine and will be arrested herself.

The idea of stealing something so prominent and so unique would be rather good for an "Entrapment" or "Mission Impossible" style of a movie. Why is it here, so outside the usual profile of the team and its typical objective of a con on a shadowy character? Because in fact the theft as such is not the objective, and this becomes obvious only at the very end of the plot.

A few elements in the plot appear almost naive, such as cracking of the security measures. As if that would be so easy... Aside of this, the convoluted storyline buries deeply the real objective of the con, and the purpose of the seemingly unrelated events and series of preparatory distractions. The most funny on the plot is that Her Majesty Police is in fact providing the "proof of authenticity" for the chunks of glass which will be "sold" several times to several shadowy collectors. I have not seen that coming!

This first episode of the 3rd season shows our intrepid team in a bad financial shape caused by Danny's blunder. Apparently this ordeal pushed them to a hasty selection of a dangerous mark. The entire idea of the con is rather simple, the "plan B" is however quite delicious. The (quite detestable) mark loses all, and yet does not know that it has been tricked. Our team did it again, this time with some cuts and bruises.

With one exception: The way in which the team obtains police vehicles and uniforms is questionable at best. This was simply not very believable, and on such deficiencies the plot fails its quality test. The better of the Hustle episodes are stunning by their level of complexity, surprising twist, and because they appear so believable. One cannot help to wonder if something like that could not happen in real life. I doubt that a team of outsiders can simply "borrow" 2-3 genuine police vehicles this way, this is not real.

Apparently the departure of Gene Roddenberry as the principal of the franchise unveils yet again the simple truth that visionaries cannot be replaced by studio's delegates. Rick Berman, or whoever else is responsible for the selection of the screenplay, does not stack up to the task.

Why are these Star Trek movies so dark now? The recurring motive seem to be yet again "a total annihilation" of planet Earth. What ever happened to exploration, first contact, mystery? This pedestrian motive is only excelled by serious faults in logic and simplistic dialogs. A cocktail of these ingredients provide the screen book of Nemesis:

There is this poor tormented human being, somehow bread by Romulans with Picard's DNA (yes, its real!) with a mission to infiltrate these pesky Humans, but than abandoned by Romulans and incarcerated in nasty mines. He liberates himself together with a race of warriors, who suddenly seem to have from somewhere resources of an Empire to build a mighty fleet, innovative weapons unheard of, and to defeat Romulans. And for a reason defying any logic, he develops also hatred to... Humans and to Federation, whom he plan to obliterate with a help of these very Romulans, who used to torment him and his companions! The absurdity of the plot is made even more ridiculous by using borrowed function denotations from Roman Empire, and there an evil "Praetor Shinzon" is born. Less funny than Dr. Evil, but much more absurd. To brighten up the movie, and to compensate for lack of any sophisticated storyline, screenplay incorporates "arcade game" type of shoot-and-run scenes, which would be better placed in Star Wars VII or XII "The Empire is yet more Evil." Suffice to say, bad guys shoot thousands of rounds, but they shoot bad. Sounds familiar?

I am so disappointed. I saw recently William Shatner's TV commentary on the downfall of the entire Star Trek franchise. His critique included the equally bad TV series with Scott Bakula, not only the screen plays. He was so right in his criticism. Studios must find a new leading team for the franchise. This appears to be the only way for Star Trek to rejuvenate itself.

Here is the scoop: Israeli secret service hunts ex-Nazis. So far so good. But once they found a suspect, why don't they go to FBI and INS? Why this secret hunt, kidnapping, assault with syringes and finally, ahem, a vigilante murder? What if they would be wrong with their suspect? And to what end did they kidnapped the person anyway? USA extradites such people. Really! They would have helped and wrapped up the entire case. So what possible reason could be in this entire kidnapping scheme?

But wait, there is more! Let's just look at the entire character depiction. Rick and Thomas are both hugging and kissing the elderly pair, who was not even mentioned in any prior episode to explain such level of tender love and admiration, and to whom they basically merely deliver their dirty stuff for cleaning. Would you hug and love your laundry man? Is this really plausible?

It is most astonishing about this miserable episode and this pitifully written script, that so many people do not even realize just how many absurdities have been piled up atop of each other in this one. I think it's being called "suspension of disbelieve." Extraordinary, as Higgins could have said.

For me this episode clearly stands out as the "yellow lemon", not belonging, a blunder. It appeared to me that in the 80ties, in the climate created in Hollywood virtually every show just had to have at least one "nazi hunt" episode, and so Magnum was also "blessed" by one. Case made, now we can return to paradise and our favorite Private Investigator.