h-christen

I do not understand people reviewing here and give it 1 or 2 rating, then it must be real crap! In my view it is far from that. It is maybe a bit original. Of course by now everything is done already in series and movies, but still... It is not Supernatural, it is not X-files or not Mentalist. The contrast is there, believer and sceptics, there is 1 believer and 2 sceptics who work together and that makes it interesting. Some people complain about the ending of episode 2, I find the conclusion or solution of David very weak, there is still a time problem, but OK, I can live with that, not a reason to quit the series. The children are very noisy, but they play a role in the story and the time they come into play is limited. Katja Herbers and Mike Colter are acting very good. Then we have also the great Michael Emerson and Christine Lahti as supporting act. I find it very entertaining.

I love this show, have seen it twice, but maybe a third will follow. Cleverly written and one of the few series in which I couldn't detect serious plotholes. mostly the biggest critic on series or movies... In fact, I needed to watch back previous scenes, to understand all the details because English is not my native language and the dialogs are often very speedy, but well written. The acting is excellent, especially DCI Denton, DCI "Dot", DS Arnott and Superintendent Hastings, but of course many others. For instance Danny Waldron in season three, how he defends himself with a waterfall of words, referring to all the rules you can think of, that was great! I liked the way the twists and turns have you guessing who to trust or not. I recommend to see all seasons in order, because there are several links between the seasons that make you fully understand what really is going on. There are 4 different cases, but they are somehow very clever connected. So much details that fit into the story and the camerawork is also very good. You are drawn into the story. We even have a very good courtroom part.

I am looking forward to season 5!

The plot was believable. There was a nice pace, so you got gripped by the things happening. Acting was OK, Nothing special comes to mind, but I like Stephen Dorff.

But WHY oh WHY do I keep reading people's complaints about the BOOK??

We are watching a movie, come on folks! If you do not like it stay in bed and read all the books of Ludlum over and over again, but do not come here to complain about a movie!

I give this a seven to eight! entertaining movie...

I saw this as a comedy, I laughed so much, so I give this a rating of seven...

I like computer adventure games, but some of them are still better than this one. They go into a forest and "suddenly" find a ruined building, wow, this must be a Nazi hideout. They find "hidden" metal doors, that nobody before them found! But they don't have to look for the key. They find "hidden" passages near the bunker, with almost unknown advanced tools like: The knock of the finger on the wall, like John Cleese... And then they find an entrance, which is known already to everybody. Hilarious! Wow, do you see this! This must be it! All accompanied by bombastic hitting heavy drums, and dramatic music, making it almost impossible to understand what they are saying... Everything they find is immediately proof of something.

And they have an incredible team of experts, experts who constantly look and nod if they just have heard, from our main Hero, about the invention of the wheel...

And we have the muscle man, who can swim, climb, crawl, dive everywhere, like he has just been recruited from Hawaii five-O...

Oh man, I enjoyed it! But not how they meant it to be I suppose...

Compelling series from The Netherlands

I like this series because of the believable stories and the acting of Cees Geel, Maryam Hassouni and Huub Stapel. There are separate cases in each episode, but there is a continuing story about Ben Slachter who is believed by Internal affairs, (here called "Rijksrecherche") to be corrupt.

Of course there are flaws, like:

Spoilers

The female detective walks in the police station, with the criminal, disguised as a police officer to get drugs from confiscated drugs. Just one signature at the desk seems to be enough... The two perpetrators behaved insane, yelling and constantly waving with guns.

Of course I am Dutch and I even live in Rotterdam.

So I want to comment on dubbel_v.

The notary

There was an investigation by Stan Vroom (Cees Geel), but he could not get a warrant for the vault because of the confidentiality. But there were CSI people at work (in Dutch they are called "Technische recherche") Cees Geel asked the secretary if she could imagine that there were clients with criminal links. Not if the notary was a criminal himself!

The woman who kidnapped a severe criminal

Dubbel_v is nitpicking considering the terms here and is in my opinion incorrect. In The Netherlands is 15 hours for interrogation only at the police station. This can be extended to 3 days and is called "inverzekerkeringstelling". After that the suspect has to be brought to the "Rechter commissaris" and that is exactly what Hein Berg (Huub Stapel) is doing. He asks for "inbewaringstelling" for 14 days. That is the third phase in "voorlopige hechtenis".

So to call him an idiot, well... Dubbel_v should check his knowledge of the Dutch language.

The woman had a plan to punish the child molester. While she was in custody and she could not feed him in the cellar, she thought it would not be murder, because she was unable to feed him because of the custody.

Huub Stapel said two things: 1/ The plan will work if the police isn't aware, but the police knows, so he gave her the choice to give the location. And then she would not be charged with murder.

2/ The charge was giving help to the escape of a criminal. She refused earlier to give the location because of self incrimination. Huub Stapel says: if you tell us the location, it does not affect your charge of helping the escape. You only tell us where he is.

So before writing a one-star review he should check his facts and listen carefully what is said in Dutch before calling Huub and the writers idiots...

End spoilers

I can recommend this, provided that there is an English translation, don't know if there is...

What a ridiculous movie! I fell asleep 3 times, not knowing what was going on.

An autistic boy with a strange rhyme, OK, I did get that.

He became an accountant who discovered things, OK, so far I get it...

But the grown up man has a very strange behavior, he takes pills ... There seems to be no reason in his actions... The girl, nice performance BTW, is protected by the superhero,.. well why not... There is killing and shooting, lots of murders why? We do not know, but the autistic seems to have superpowers too. From that point it gets stranger and stranger... Lewis Caroll, mathematics, etc...

I will not go into details further, But see for yourself what an incomprehensible story it is.

At the end I was gazing at the screen with a nonsensical look in my eye, help!

Of course I read the negative reviews. But they are all so one-dimensional.

They say: a/ No answers to all questions in the end b/ No ridiculous twists in the end c/ The acting is supposedly very bad? Why? d/ The filming is stupid

Well, I found this series superb!

Nothing one-dimensional here, but multi layers. For instance, the good boy isn't all that good, the low life lawyer is in fact very clever. The detective is a gentle beast, but in the end he is still a good detective and goes investigating after retirement, and so on and so on. All characters are believable, there is no attempt to make the police the bad guy, or the DA, they all do their jobs.

The filming is very nice and clever, the shots in close-up made sense, like the falling lighter out of the hands of Freddy, later out of the hands of Naz after smoking. And there are many close-ups that refer to an event...

Some may say there are a lot of details that could be left out. I disagree...

The whole struggle with the "feet" of the lawyer appeared to be "stress" in the end. And the feet did make him extra repulsive.

Apart from humorous effects, the cat was symbolic in two ways. 1. As long as he cared for the cat the case was alive...

when he thought the case fell apart, he brought the cat back to the animal home.

2. He felt very alone, his son didn't want to know him, when the cat was there he could say goodnight, or "I am leaving".

There was a link to Naz, he phoned Chandra to just say goodnight to someone...

The change of Naz, to survive in prison you have to change, you can be a "yarn", but if held long enough, you will change.

So many things in this series you can think about.

OK, maybe it has done before, I do not mind, this is very well done, ...

Good series, well acted, interesting cases, but:

Possible spoilers!

There is however one thing that bothers me. From the start it has been a series about forensics and pathology. But from a certain point, especially the seasons with Nikki and Jack, there seems to be a tendency to give all the credits to the forensic analyst and pathologist. Jack seems to be a detective too! He goes with the detective in the field all the time. A job that should be the detective's partner's job... He goes running after suspects, arresting them with handcuffs (since when do laboratory guys do that?, well since CSI probably), has better ideas than the detectives, making the detectives an extension of forensics instead of the other way around... and making them a bit laughable, "wow, didn't the detective see that coming?"...

But if you can see through all this deviation from reality, it is an exciting series.

Of course there are also unbelievable aspects, like we see in other series. Pollen, micro organisms or special metals in a ground sample taken from a car's tyre lead them to dig exactly in the right place.

A thing taken from other series perhaps: there has to be a "weird" person in the team, Clarissa, Sorry Liz Carr, nothing personal, I like you in the series!

Criminal minds has two of them, Dr Spencer Reid and Penelope, Bones has Zack, NCIS has Abby, NCIS New Orleans has Patton (Mitchell) in a wheelchair and I could go on...

But despite of all that, I watched all 20 seasons with pleasure...

This is another example of incomprehensible movies from the early seventies. Like "The parallax view" I reviewed.

Movies are supposed to be entertaining, but these kind of movies are a pain in the head. You are trying to understand what is happening, but the director likes riddles to a very extreme extent. Most of the riddles are ill-founded by close up's, for instance, a tape running in a tape recorder, or a cigarette in an ashtray, multiple characters popping up from nowhere for no reason, as little information as possible given of characters, situations or hidden in such a way that you need to rewind multiple times. All to cover up that the story in fact is ridiculous. All has to be mysterious, but there is no suspense at all. I cannot identify with Klute because I know nothing about him. He is a wooden puppet. I do not understand the severe search for a certain Gruneman, from who we don't know anything. In fact we are fed very little information, only that a certain Gruneman has to be found. So for me this movie is a torture to sit out. One thing that makes sense for me is the transition of Bree from a call girl who can't feel anything, to a person that has feelings for Klute but even that feels fabricated.

Why are so many scenes pitch-dark?

Read no further, if you haven't seen it yet, because I will give a summary of the movie.

SPOILERS!!

People are babbling through a dinner...

Suddenly, pay attention to the word suddenly, because things always seem to happen suddenly in this kind of movies.

Suddenly, we see a row of women, tested like cows in a livestock market.

John Klute is interrogated about the disappearance of a certain Thomas Gruneman. As well is Mrs. Gruneman. There is a meeting, by whom? to investigate the Gruneman case and they like Klute to do it. There is a call girl, who was under surveillance. The call girl remembered Gruneman from the mysterious letters. Gruneman may have been stalking this call girl. Why, how?, we don't know. By the way, the anonymous call girl was in the line of the tested girls.

Suddenly we know the name of the call girl, Bree, because she is at the house of an unknown call girl caller, and we are witness of an embarrassing call girl-caller encounter. We see a day in the life of a call girl and suddenly John Klute is at her door, and next thing we see is Bree at an audition, because she likes to be an actress.

We see a man unknown to us pouring drinks. A client of Bree. After a pathetic monologue from Bree we see a close up of John Klute. Bree is arguing with a woman unknown to us so far, but she is likely to be her psychiatrist. Suddenly Bree calls Klute, but we don't even know what happened last time when Klute was at her door. Klute has a tape recorder connected to his phone.

Recordings from Bree are played. Then suddenly we see Bree with her pimp and a photographer, and the pimp appears to be: Klute, yes, undercover. The photographer is most likely her real pimp.

Now the search is for a certain Arlyn Page, a junkie... Bree is acting with an Irish accent, just for fun I guess. Bree is scavenging through police photo's of dead girls. How did they get access to these photo's?

Then the inevitably sexual encounter Klute-Bree, and suddenly they are an investigative team! Seventies disco and Bree goes into the arms of the pimp and Klute watches that.

Klute reports to his boss and now they talk about a beating, who is beaten? Klute's boss listens to tapes of Bree and we see a photo of men on the moon...

Klute goes to Bree, nothing is said, he puts her in bed. Next thing we see is Bree at the psychiatrist.

O yes, now we are after Jane McKenna who is dead accordingly to Bree and Klute is at some weird evidence place, he found a necklace there I think.

Body of Arlyn Page has been found by the police.

Well, I have to say the scene on the market with Klute and Bree was very touching.

So suddenly we know a name, Peter Cable, identified by comparing typewriter notes. It's the boss of Klute! Then we have a scene with Bree, Klute and her pimp. There is a fight between Klute and the pimp and Bree tries to stab Klute with scissors. Klute leaves and Bree is at her psychiatrist again, who is not there, then she calls Mr. Goldfarb, the mysterious client we have seen before.

Then suddenly at the office of Mr. Goldfarb Klute's boss turns up and begins to confess 3 murders to Bree. He tries to murder Bree, but of course Klute is just in time and saves the day.

Curtain.

As we say in dutch when we hear a bunch of total nonsense: "Ik kan er geen chocolade van maken"

I can't make chocolate of that.

What a ridiculous movie. If you try to follow what is happening your head begins to spin. Is it a movie from the early seventies when directors were still on acid? There is no head or tail, when it is finished you ask yourself "What was that all about?" Well, there was a head and tail, but it didn't make sense. Only for the paranoid minds perhaps...

I must admit, the cinematography was good. It reminded me in the ending of Playtime from Jaques Tati, but that doesn't make it a good movie. The story was a mess in my opinion, and our hero just hopped from one scene in another without any coherence. I have nothing against a conspiracy thriller, but make it intelligent and thrilling, this was boring and impossible to follow the actions of the main character.

If you haven't seen it yet, do not read further!

Spoilers!!

There is an assassination on a certain senator Carrol. Austin Tucker is his adviser. Witnesses are a television reporter Lee among many others. 3 years! later Lee comes to newspaper reporter Frady, hysterically claiming they want to kill her. Already six witnesses were killed according to her. And of course she is killed not long after this meeting, so Frady dives deeper. He gets into an awful bar fight with a deputy, but the sheriff sits just grinning: well done boy... After that it seems like Frady and the sheriff are well known buddies for a long time. But the sheriff wants to kill him (why?), which doesn't work, quite the opposite, so Frady breaks into the sheriffs house and finds something about Parallax!

After a meeting with some guy that plays a computer game with an ape he does a ridiculous test in a chair in the parallax company. After that he is suddenly in a plane and tries to write something about a bomb with soap on a mirror and suddenly he is home again. In the meantime his head editor from the newspaper is murdered by a food delivery guy. What the ...

Everything appears to be happening suddenly, with no reason, background, motive, or how it is possible. For instance, he is suddenly on a boat with Austin Tucker, (how did he find him?) Austin and his bodyguard smile at each other as if they were going to kill Frady, but suddenly the boat explodes and Frady is blown into the water and the next moment he is safe at the office of the newspaper. How the h... did he manage to do that? Is he a well trained ocean swimmer and a bomb survivor? Who placed the bomb and why? And so on and so on...

Then he is supposed to meet his handler, (undercover) Ben Harkins, but in the hotel he gives Ben some weird instructions, to go to Hawaii. Then he asks for a mister Jack Younger the fellow who recruited him for parallax. Then some guys from security, or fake security, (I don't mind, my head spins already) watch him, ... And suddenly we have to watch a march band and a mysterious Mr Hammond is killed.

A committee decided that Frady was responsible for the murder of Hammond, just like they decided who was responsible of the murder of senator Carrol in the beginning. Curtain...

As we in The Netherlands say, I couldn't make chocolate of it...

I agree with the critics that the pace is very slow, but that pace is extremely well done in this case. I am now watching episode 3. Call it suspense, very well supported by the sound track. There is a strong tension: what is going to happen? Build a strong court case, how are the reactions of involved people, the victim, Stella, the ER, the nurse, the obsessed nanny, the wife, the children etc… It is more drama than police action, but what is wrong with that? No bullets flying around our heads or cars chasing. It is directed very well with an eye for detail. An important point of view is about ethics. Many people would just want revenge, just let the bastard die! But the ER man explained, "our job is to take care of injured people the best we can, regardless of the alleged crimes he committed".

I am glued to my seat while watching this. Very well done!

To all negative voters, please keep in mind it is film we are talking about. Nobody asks if James Bond is realistic. Of course it is impossible to jump in an elevator shaft like Jolie does. So did Bruce Willis in Die hard.

And please do not take the political things about Russians and Americans seriously. It is just fiction, and done before.

It kept me glued to my seat while watching.

The special effects are well done. I do not know what she did with the fire extinguisher, to make such an explosion, but who cares...

So nothing wrong with this movie, very entertaining action movie!

IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SPOILERS, FIRST WATCH AND THEN READ THIS...

This review is triggered by the reaction of Patherton, the anti political correct person. To begin with, I find this an amazing series, very well played by the actors. The series, in my opinion, lets see how the influence of the past throws the shadow over the present, even for old people... It's a story of a so called cold case team. I wondered how it is in England, I am from Netherlands, at some time, 18 years, the crime is "verjaard" here. I think it is called "limitation" in UK. So no persecution is possible. So I was surprised to see arrests... But that is not the point, all people somehow involved in the victim's life see their present life disrupted, they have tried to put their involvement to the back of their minds, but that never had success, and now the police come to rattle it up... Its also about change, can you really change from skinhead to tolerant? Are you really different from the person yo were 40 years ago? The main question from the detective is also crucial, "should I do it or shouldn't I?" Its 40 years ago, let it go, no!, "I want to solve the case and punish the perpetrator". Heartbreaking is the confrontation between detective and mother of the victim.

Now the racists aspects. It is a well known fact that in the 70ties gay bashing was not unknown and hatred against "coloured" people also existed. So not a strange move to keep that possibility open in the investigation. In fact there are a lot of references at racism, the boy who gets angry at his protector, who means well, the victim being "chocolate", the husband who protects his wife even after he knows the facts of her former life... So, Patherton, why on earth should one go counting who is white and who is black in a series? And who is bad and who is not? That says something about you, doesn't it?

According to Patherton: 1/ Detective is female, what a political correct fact! 2/ Assistant is Indian, another one! So we have now a female detective with an Indian assistant and they go along very well, well, that's enlightening... 3/ All the bad men were white! What a joke, It just happened to be so. If you ever watch American series, all black kids are in gangs and all are involved with weapons and drugs. No, not this series. 4/ A woman who marries a black man and helps a black kid with his chemistry exam, is also political correct? Maybe she really regretted the phase of her former life, being member of National front? And whats wrong with political correct? What is political correct anyway? Had the series been better if there was a black murderer? If so obviously Patherton has no idea about the intentions of the series...

So, go see this, its a very good series that make you think... Very clever and emotional filmmaking.

At the moment I am watching season 2 and that is as good as season one. In the beginning we see stories of people of which we ask ourselves, who are they? and what is this? As the series goes on we see all the stories are entangled with the story of the victim. Fascinating stuff! Again, solving a murder that happened a long time ago, does involve different kind of people. And again some aspects of today's society are mentioned. Like the woman with the headscarf who likes to be the school headmaster, or 2 men who live together and like to be father of an adopted girl... The son of the victim, who struggled his whole life with the disappearance of his father...

This is a great series!