TV Review The Prisoner (2009 - 2009)
Ubiquitous
The Prisoner, AMC's heavily hyped, six-part, three-night remake of the
1967-68 British TV series, is about a guy who wakes up in an
unrecognizable place he learns is called the Village. There, everyone is
assigned a number, not a name. He is thenceforth called Six, and played
by Jim Caviezel; the leader of the Village is Two, played by Ian
McKellen. Who's number One? Ha! You must sit through six hours of The
Prisoner for that info, just as I did, my friends.
Six is a combination hero/victim/symbol, and therefore right up the
alley of the actor who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
Caviezel staggers around the Village with a permanent expression of
irritation mixed with bewilderment. (Six may be on AMC, but he's no Don
Draper.) We see during the opening credits that he resigned in anger
from his job in a mysterious corporation. We know he was angry because
he wrote RESIGN in red letters on a glass office wall � not the sort of
thing that gets you a recommendation from the HR department. Every
second of The Prisoner's six hours is crammed with mysteries, non
sequiturs, and ponderous pronouncements (''Everything is suspicious if
you look at it properly'').
Two is as central as Six, and thank goodness McKellen brings his usual
impishness to a role written with assiduous humorlessness by Bill
Gallagher. McKellen lends Two a welcome twinkle occasionally, and the
character needs it: He has a semicomatose wife, and a gay son (Jamie
Campbell Bower) who suffers for his sexuality. Two doesn't have it quite
as bad as Six, though, who is regularly chased (as was his character in
the '60s original) by a gigantic white bouncing balloon that smothers if
it catches you.
This Prisoner is a co-production with Britain's ITV, but it lacks the
wit and zip of the original Prisoner. That one, co-created by its star,
Patrick McGoohan, is one of the rare pieces of cult television that
really holds up. (See for yourself in the extras-filled Blu-ray/DVD
collection of all 17 episodes.) McGoohan wandered through a Village that
was really North Wales, and put anguish in his voice when he yelled the
series' catchphrase: ''I am not a number, I am a free man!'' It was both
trippy and violent, and dovetailed with then-current countercultural
notions of rebellious individuality. It's no wonder the Beatles let
McGoohan use ''All You Need Is Love'' for its machine-gunblasting,
mind-blowing finale.
No such mind-blowing occurs on the new Prisoner. Gallagher has said that
the original's theme is old hat, and he wanted to deal with our current
�obsession with self.� Ick. That's exactly what's wrong with the new
Prisoner: It's self-absorbed to the point of incoherence. C
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
pongespob
> Who's number One? Ha! You must sit through six hours of The
> Prisoner for that info, just as I did, my friends.
Yeah, I'll be doing that for a series they think is junk. Being
contemporary American TV is 2 1/2 strikes against it to begin with.
Remaking a classic British series might as well have fanfare trumpets
announcing it's going to be crap, with none of whatever made the
original good.
As soon as I saw the name Rick Schroeder in the cast of The Andromeda
Strain - I knew it would be garbage. I watched about ten minutes of it
to confirm my suspicions. It takes a big budget to badly remake a
movie.
Jeezus people, turn off the tv, learn to play a musical instrument.
Graeme
> ...and a gay son (Jamie Campbell Bower) who suffers for his sexuality.
Amazing how many stories from Hollywood these days can inject their
favorite stock themes into any script, simply because their
repertoires are so limited. I laughed out loud when I heard Flyboys
was going to have a black ace in the Lafayette Escadrille, who dealt
with racism. It all reminds me of one of those hour long Twilight
Zone episodes where Shakespeare helps a struggling hack writer who
keeps pitching variations on the same story to a producer, all of them
involving someone promising his girlfriend never to do something
dangerous again, but circumstances require him to break the promise.
"There's this astronaut who promised his girl he'd never go up in
space again." "There's this flyer who promised his girl he'd never
fly another combat mission." "There's this fireman who..." And he
finally gets tossed out by the producer incredulous that anyone could
pitch so many variations on the same story.
Micky DuPree
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In article
<2047f083-34fe-4ba1...@k4g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Graeme <graem...@aol.com> writes:
: On Nov 14, 3:37=A0pm, web...@polaris.net (Ubiquitous) wrote:
:: ...and a gay son (Jamie Campbell Bower) who suffers for his
:: sexuality.
:
: Amazing how many stories from Hollywood these days can inject their
: favorite stock themes into any script, simply because their
: repertoires are so limited.
Sounds more like the Hollywood of the old days, where the gay character
had to be dangerous, and propriety dictated that he die by the end of
the movie. _The Prisoner_ wasn't the kind of narrative beloved by
Hollywood past or present, though.
-Micky
Anim8rFSK
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
Except the gay character in TP09 was dangerous, and did die by the end,
and the audience cheered. The other gay character just died, murdered
by the first; we never got to find out if he was dangerous or not.
--
Stargate Universe SGU: It puts the "U" in "SUCKS"!
It's the show 'Defiling Gravity' would be if DG had more regulars,
fewer abortions, worse writers, and no budget for lighting.
Remember, you can't spell "disgust" without SGU!
Moor Larkin
> Except the gay character in TP09 was dangerous, and did die by the end,
> and the audience cheered. The other gay character just died, murdered
> by the first; we never got to find out if he was dangerous or not.
Did either of them get thrown out of a castle window?
Just wondering if there was another arcane reference to watch out for
next year.
mOOr
o
ww
Anim8rFSK
<aefb0da6-17c4-4ba9...@u20g2000vbq.googlegroups.com>,
Moor Larkin <moorl...@googlemail.com> wrote:
No. The petulant gay drunken (probably underage) son murdered (stabbing
him repeatedly) his older lover so that he wouldn't be hurt in some
other way (don't ask) and then murdered his mother in bed (mostly just
because) and then hung himself.
