Samizdata

I like to read paperback thrillers as well as the supposed more “serious stuff” out there. Authors that I willingly take to the beach or read on a train, the Tube or for that matter, while curling up on the sofa in my flat are ones that many people will recognise: Frederick Forsyth, Ian Fleming, Alastair Maclean, Eric Ambler (a much under-appreciated writer), Mickey Spillane, Roger Simon, John D. McDonald (Travis Magee stories, etc), and many more. And I am never more grateful than when I stumble upon a new author who has the ability to keep the pages turning. One such example is Lee Child, a TV journalist from the West Midlands who has emigrated to the States and become an accomplished thriller writer via his superb Jack Reacher stories. If you haven’t read them, start now. There’s no excuse. Reacher is simply one of the most engaging characters I have come across in years. Reacher embodies the sort of “loner hero” one gets in the best Westerns (think of the great movie Shane or Clint Eastwood’s terrific Outlaw Josey Wales) and the very modern up-to-date know-how of a criminal investigator. He has a manly, no-nonsense attitude towards dealing with the bad guys with a very smart understanding of women but does not fall into fake sentimentality or over-the-top macho posturing one gets in certain kinds of movies. Reacher has his demons – he cannot deal with being tied down in any sort of relationship – but he is blessedly free from the “flawed hero” syndrome of much popular culture. He is a hero, full stop. If ever there is a series of novels crying to be made into movies, this series is it, although part of me hopes that it does not happen, given how Hollywood often royally buggers up fine material.

Now, gentle reader, you are wondering why I referred to the “power of blogs” in the headline. Well, I wrote that because I owe Robert Bidinotto, a blogger, academic and magazine editor a large ‘thank you’ (if we ever meet, the beer’s on me, Bob) for praising Lee Child’s writings to the skies. Bob’s literary judgement is normally laser accurate, so almost as soon as I read his interesting interview with Child, I made sure that the next time I passed a bookshop, I got one of Child’s novels (Bob’s blog can be found here).

For spending a week on the seaside in Malta and Gozo, as I have been this week, there is not a better writer to stick in the rucksack for the trip to the beach than Lee Child.

Of course, there are some who would argue that the greatest thriller ever written, certainly in terms of its sweep and scope, is the Count of Monte Cristo. I am not going to contest that.

I liked this film, 3:10 to Yuma. The death of the Western is one of those occasional refrains, but this is fine piece of film-making. There were one or two clichés in it (those evil rotten railroad barons) but those clichés had some basis in fact.

The picture of the old West was almost completely bleak, but it made for great drama, and a terrific set of gunfights. For a rather contrarian view of the West, this book is worth a look.

The film Death Sentence is worth seeing.

As the saying goes “Warning! spoilers below”… → Continue reading: ‘Death Sentence’ – a film worth seeing

The Bourne Ultimatum is a crackerjack of a high-adrenalin, fast-paced film. I must admit that I am slightly allergic to Matt Damon but he delivers the goods in this third instalment of the Jason Bourne series. James Bond he ain’t: no tuxedos, no rapier one-line putdowns, no Russian Smersh agents called Tanya and definitely no Aston Martins with ejector seats but for excitement, it ranks highly. I was slightly irritated by the constantly jerky film shifts – the director is obviously trying to show how realistic and gritty the whole thing is, and I am not entirely convinced that the CIA’s technology is as snazzy as in the film. But these are quibbles.

I expected to see a few cliches in this film, and we were not entirely disappointed. Yes, the CIA is portrayed as riddled with mad, bad people, but on the other hand, justice is done, the bad folk get brought to book eventually, and the film does not imply, as far as I can tell, that the threats to the US are somehow made up or are the figments of imagination. If anything, the message is that overzealous security agencies can easily convince themselves that it is okay to violate the boundaries of the law to do what is necessary. No one is above the law.

I also smiled wryly at the way the film showed how many CCTV cameras there are in Britain. The scene at Waterloo Station, for example, was excellently done, and horribly believable.