House Of Cards - Netflix TV Series

         I guess that when a TV series is produced, there are a lot of factors that go into it.  If you have a good plot that keeps the viewer watching along with some great characters, then you have a good series that will keep people interested. 

        Unfortunately, there are some writers and producers who may lose confidence in what they’re doing and feel that then need to add some shock value to the story.  As a result, it probably makes the TV show much worse and people like me become frustrated that the writer pushed me away.  

        In House Of Cards, the drama had a intriguing character named Francis Underwood, who is played by Kevin Spacey, a Senator who will eventually become Vice President of the United States.  His demeanor and his actions seem off beat for a Democrat.  My first thought was that he would be better as a Republican.  

         In the first season, he managed to get an education bill passed by getting one of the members of the teachers union to start a fight with him.  Later, in the finale of the first season, Francis would murder a state senator and make it look like a suicide.  

          By the time the second season has begun, a reporter that Francis has had an affair with seems to be closing in on him with proof that he murdered the Senator.  His response.  He would throw her on to the tracks of a train that would run her down.  

          There were things that I did not like about this show.  One would be when Francis would kill a dog to put it out of it’s misery after it was hit by a car.  Then, later on in the second season, we would see another character named Raymond Tusk, kill a bird with his bare hand.  Being that I have a cat, I’m not comfortable seeing this since there are so many stories that we hear about regarding animals being abused.  

           There were some other good points to this series.  Seeing how reporters operated on their own with the internet seemed very interesting.  Francis being at odds with Tusk and the President made for some good conflicts as well.  Then there were other memorable characters such as Francis’s wife having her affair and being raped by a officer in the military as part of her past.  

            I could go on and on and would even say that the writer and producer of this show was on to something.  I found this series gripping and couldn’t wait to see the end until I got to Episode 24.  

            Towards the end of this episode, you would see Francis, his wife, and his bodyguard, in the beginning of a three way with all three of them kissing each other.  It took less than five seconds for me to grab the remote and shut off the show, shaking my head, saying “come one, this is ridiculous.”  

             In a nutshell, that is me canceling this show.  Writers and producers have to learn that you can only take a viewer like me so far.  Once you go too far and cross a line, then that’s when I walk away and felt that the whole series was a waste of time for me to watch.  

              No stars for House Of Cards.  Just another TV show that was a huge disappointment.  

Ron Hummer 

Don't Look Back by Karin Fossum - Nordic Crime Review

           The story begins when a little girl named Ragnhild who has disappeared from her village and no one knows where she is.  She was going home when a man picked her up in his van and said that he would take her where she needed to go.  

           Obviously, this is terrifying and you hope for the best.  Ragnhild is brought back to this man’s house and after a while she pleads with the man to take her home.  Eventually, he agrees and he leaves her by her parents house.  

           Inspector Sejer has already gotten involved in the case and he is questioning people along with his partner.  Once the girl returns home, every one is relieved until Ragnhild makes a startling confession.  She saw a dead body with this man in the woods.  

            This is where the story, Don’t Look Back begins, as Sejer along with his team go out to the woods to see the woman who has died.  Her name is Annie and she is a student.  There are a multitude of suspects and it’s up to Sejer to solve the mystery.  

            To me, it didn’t make much sense to start the story with the disappearance of Ragnhild.   For a book that was 421 pages, having what seemed like 30 or 40 pages to begin with on this story which has nothing to do with the murder seems bizarre.  Yes, children can disappear and this is scary but why bother putting it at the beginning of a mystery that will have nothing to do with the rest of the story seems more like a waste of pages if anything.  Just start the mystery with Ragnhild seeing a body would make more sense to me.  

             As far as the rest of the book is concerned, much of it is a dry police procedural with Sejer and his partner questioning suspects.  The point of view switches back to the minds of the suspects as well, which again, makes the story drag on.   The story seemed to go on forever for me at times, as if each chapter was at least 50 pages, if not more.  

              The story takes place in a rural village outside of Oslo, but unlike novels by my favorite writer, Camilla Lackberg, there wasn’t much of a feeling that this takes place in Norway.  Yes, this was a poor village and one of the people who was questioned mentioned that some children spent most of their lives weaving baskets until their fingers were worn out.  That only made the book more depressing for me.  

                Aa a result, most of the novel lacked any real suspense for me.   Since the viewpoints were going back and fourth between Sejer and the suspects, this put an interesting twist on the last 50 pages of the novel as the killer was revealed.  You could say that it was a dark twist but in detective novels, I prefer that someone like Sejer has all the answers like DCI Banks or other great detectives. 

                In some ways, you could say that these characters were broken, making this more of a psychological thriller.  The problem here was that you needed more of a story other then a detective questioning suspects.  Again, if you were to compare this to Lackberg, you would find that she creates a story that is more character driven with a great ending.  

                Not a great novel but not a bad one either.  I understand that this book is loosely based on an Italian film, The Girl By The Lake.   That movie didn’t get good reviews.   While there were a lot of good reviews on Goodreads and Amazon,  I can’t follow them and will give this book three stars.  

Ron Hummer 

Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit - DVD Review

        In a slow moving action packed drama, a younger version of Jack Ryan is back.  Here he is trying to stop the Russians from crashing the US Economy with a terrorist attack.   

        Chris Pine plays Jack Ryan, the soldier of the Tom Clancy novels instead of Harrison Ford.   In Shadow Recruit, the movie starts out with Ryan enlisting in the Marines after 911 and going to Afghanistan.   A chopper that he would get on would be shot down and he would suffer injuries where he would require intense rehab.  

         From there, he would meet Cathy Mueller, played by Keira Knightly.  She would help him and eventually, she would become part of his life as his girlfriend although you don’t know too much about that since the movie switches to the present where he becomes analyst for the CIA. 

         After that, much of the movie focuses on Ryan working on Wall Street and looking into financial indiscretions in the market.  He discovers a plot by the Russians that will crash the market and the movie takes off from there. 

         The movie becomes intense from there.   The subplot is that Cathy seems to think that Ryan is having an affair and she gets involved in his mission as a result.  That only builds the suspense as the movie moves further.   Adding Kevin Costner to the movie only made it better. 

         I’ve read Tom Clancy novels in the past and my feeling is that they were really drawn out and much too long.  In this movie, that seems to be more of the same since it moves from Ryan’s early life when he enlisted in the Marines.  For a movie that is barely under two hours, I just wonder how important it was to the movie.  

         In any case, I will say that I enjoyed this movie in any case and it was worth five stars.  

Ron Hummer 

          

Justice for Sara by Erica Spindler - Book Review

          One night, there were two murders in the small town of Liberty.  Katherine McCall finds her sister, Sara, brutally murdered.   Someone had come into her home and beat her to death with a baseball bat.  The main suspect in the murder was Katherine because she would inherit all of her sister’s money.  

         Later on that night, a police officer named Wally was killed during a traffic stop.  The police tried to connect the two murders but were unsuccessful.  

           10 years later, Katherine came back to Liberty to open her bakery and find out who killed her sister after she was acquitted at her trial.  She would find an ally in Luke Tanner, the new sheriff of Liberty.  His father, the former sheriff, was the one who thought that Katherine had killed Sara. 

          I guess you could say that this book was a psychological thriller in combination with a murder mystery.  The elements of the psychological thriller were threats to Katherine when she came back to liberty such as finding a baseball bat in her home.  The mystery part was that there were a multitude us suspects that could have killed Sara.  

           The story moved from different points of view of characters from Luke Tanner to Sara McCall.  At other times, it moved to what happened the before and after the murders from different suspects who may have killed Sara.  It was hard to eliminate anyone and even harder to guess who killed Sara and Wally.   

             I thought that this made the book more dynamic like the mysteries that Bruno Fischer wrote with his detective, Ben Helm.  In that series, he wrote the book from different points of view that included all the suspects.  By the end, Helm would solve the murder.  

             While the book was a great mystery, I thought that the combination of it being a psychological thriller weakened the story.   Going from different points of view and replaying the murder scenes seems dynamic but I thought the story didn’t work well as a psychological thriller murder mystery as a result.  My feeling was that if the author made a choice to go either way, it would have been a better story with more suspense.  The only suspense I found that the story had was in guessing who the killer was. 

               The other point was the end, when we knew who the killer was.  Yes, there were twists and turns but the combination of the murder mystery psychological thriller let Sara and Luke to stumble over each other in solving the murders.  

              The best part of the Justice For Sara was the mystery of finding out who the killer was.  In any case, I would still give Justice for Sara four stars. 

Ron Hummer 

Non-Stop - DVD Review

           Liam Neeson is back as Bill Marks, an Air Marshall who seems to have problems since he’s an alcoholic that was brought on by his daughter’s death, is on a plane with a passenger who has texted a threat to him.   He wants $150 million dollars transferred to an offshore account or he will kill a passenger every 20 minutes.  

           The move is a great psychological thriller with the mystery of Neeson trying to find who the killer is before all the passengers are killed.  He’s not getting any help from the crew or his boss because they don’t trust him due to his past.  If anything, the killer is making it look as though Marks is on the plot to kill passengers.  

            What makes it tougher for Marks is to find the killer.  Everyone has a cell phone and it’s hard to figure out who is sending him all the texts as he’s trying to find the killer.  The suspense only builds since each death is more elaborate than the last one.  Marks’s gruff behavior of getting the passengers to listen keeps the movie moving as well.  

             I thought at one point that the movie had at least one flaw.  When there is the threat of an explosion on the plane, the solution seemed to put as many bags as possible on top of the bomb so it wouldn’t explode.  I couldn’t buy into this at all as the plot moved along.  It would have better to go in a different direction than that since it wasn’t believable.  

             With the flaw, the movie still had a lot of good moments.  I like the way Marks’s character blended with other characters such as Jen Summers, who was played by Julienne Moore.  Moore’s performance was great since she was a broken character that added more suspense to the movie as  well.  

             Neeson was great in the lead role like he was in the Taken movies.  It was a different character for him and he did a great job.  In some ways, I felt that he was back in those movies again in character - especially with the martial arts scenes - but in any case, he did a great job.   

             With the flaw on the explosion on the plane, I would still give the movie four stars since it did leave me on the edge of my seat throughout the movie.  

Ron Hummer 

            

The Breach by Patrick Lee - Book Review

          I guess you could say that on one hand, The Breach is an action-packed novel with Travis Chase playing the lead character and hero like you would see from other writers like Barry Eisler, Lee Child, and Brad Thor.  The difference here that this is more of a Science Fiction blend since there is an object called The Whisper that controls peoples mind.  

          The story is off to a great start.  Travis Chase sees a plane with dead bodies inside.  One of the bodies is the President’s wife.  Evidently, there is a group of people out to find The Whisper and it’s up to Patrick to find this first.

           While the first 60 or so pages of the story did have a great beginning filled with action and suspense, the middle of the story slowed down.  It didn’t help that there were flashbacks to Travis’s past that included how he was in jail in the first place.  The conflict of how he went to jail and what happened to his wife was a good build up but again, there wasn’t that much suspense that led up to it. 

            For me, I think the biggest reason for the lack of suspense was the main character, Travis Chase.   This is the kind of story where people like me would compare Travis Chase with characters like John Rain, Lee Child, and Barry Eisler.  Travis doesn’t have the charisma that drives this story home for me.  If you need a better example, I would say look to the Die Hard movies with Bruce WIllis.  

             There was a chance of romance Paige Campbell, a survivor of the crash.   To me, that fell flat.  It could have made the book stronger for me, especially with Travis being involved in battles with the people who wanted the whisper.  One reader on kindle thought that Paige was a femme fatale.  I didn’t see that.  

               While this book got a lot of five star ratings on Kindle, I have to agree with what was said on the three star ratings.  The characters weren’t developed well.  One person even said that they seemed like cardboard cutouts.  Have to agree with that and give this book three stars as well.  

Ron Hummer

Begin Again - Movie Review

          Mark Ruffalo plays Dan, a music executive who gets fired from the company that he owned.   After leaving the company, he goes out to a bar to get drunk and meets Gretta - who is played by Kiera Knightly - and sees her perform and wants to sign her to a deal.   Eventually, they would produce an album together on the streets of New York City.  

           This is the story of Begin Again, a character driven movie with music that reminds me of artists like Cheryl Crow and Jewel.  This is a great story with characters who are broken combined with great music which is great to listen to as the movie progresses.  

            Much of the movie involves the relationship with Gretta and flashbacks to her former boyfriend Dave, who is played by Adam Levine.    From there, the movie moves through the streets of New York where she is singing while Dave is making an album.  

             The beginning of the movie repeated three times from three different points of view.  I found that confusing but I went with it since there were some great performances by Knightly and Ruffalo.  I liked the relationship between them and Ruffalo’s antics of never having money to pay his bar tabs.  

             This wasn’t the kind of movie that had any suspense although I wondered if Gretta and Dave would get back together and what effect it would have on their album.  It was good since the romance wasn’t predictable and you never really knew how that would end.  

             I wondered if there was a message sent about this movie regarding the music industry since there was some hesitation by Gretta to have a record company back her on an album.  That’s what made the end of the movie more interesting for me. 

             Happy to say that there are great characters, great movie, and a great story with some funny moments.  Happy to give this movie five stars. 

Ron Hummer