Customer Reviews

Cracker: A New Terror

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Robbie Coltrane is back in this thriller...he's older, fatter, and even more restless and risks his family, the admiration of his son, and his time with his new granddaughter, to "get on" with an intriguing case. Someone is killing people by breaking their necks. In the meantime you really get into the head of the killer, who is a vulnerable, sympathetic character and you gain a different perspective on the IRA problem. All the regulars appear in this full-length episode and I was thrilled to get back to the series; so well-acted, each and every character perfectly cast, as always. Poor Mrs. Fitz; she can't get her husband to hang around and just play the grandfather! I hope they will make more Cracker episodes..!

"Cracker: A New Terror," a free-standing episode of the highly-popular, highly-acclaimed, award-winning British 1990's television detective series -- it made its initial debut in 1993 -- was made by Granada, in 2006, for British Independent Television (ITV). It was seen in the United States on BBC America, and released here on DVD in late 2007. The mystery/thriller was written by the veteran Jimmy McGovern, creator of the series, and writer of some of its strongest episodes, and directed by Antonia Bird (The Hamburg Cell.) It stars, as usual, Robbie Coltrane, who since this 1990s TV triumph that first made him famous, has gone on to burnish his name on the bigger screen in Ocean's Twelve; the "Harry Potter" series, and a couple of "James Bond 007s." It is billed as the final episode of "Cracker," though some of us surely hope not.

In this feature-length production, Coltrane reprises his title role as Dr. Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald, controversial criminologist, abrasive, arrogant and brilliant psychologist. Coltrane dominates the film, of course, with his powerful portrayal of his character. At any rate, Fitz, his long-suffering wife Judith (Barbara Flynn), and their youngest son supposedly have lived as ex-pats in Australia for nearly a decade, while he grapples with his addictions to drink, cigarettes and gambling. They now return to their hometown, Manchester, for the wedding of his daughter. Fitz is, of course, older, fatter, and grayer, and, as a further result of his heavy indulgences, he's looking into Viagra. But he's still capable of rising to the occasion: he can mortify his daughter at her wedding; and get himself involved in helping the local police solve a puzzling murder case.

Fitz finds England much changed in the aftermath of America's horrendous 9/11 terrorist experience; and we are given frequent big bites of TV news shows dealing with American President George Bush, English Prime Minister Tony Blair, and our war in Iraq. Fitz also finds Manchester, a beautiful and interesting city that we don't generally see over here, greatly changed since he left: taxi drivers tell him the changes are due to American, Irish, and drug money: that the city's awash in drugs. The city's also awash in its own accent, that we on these shores would find difficult; happily, the DVD offers unadvertised closed captioning, among its advertised extra features: interviews with Coltrane, Flynn, McGovern, and other cast members, etc.

The murder investigation centers on a handsome, unusually sensitive young local cop, Kenny Archer, played by Anthony Flanagan. He appears to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his previous service in the bloody, long-running war in Northern Ireland. And he's come up with a series of interesting theories that blame everything on the U.S. We're responsible for the Northern Ireland war, as we -- mainly our Irish-Americans, of course-- bankrolled it. (And there are a couple of anti-Irish cracks in the film's text, too.) The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are nothing more than the terrorism we sponsored in Northern Ireland come home to haunt us, as well. We're also responsible for Manchester's drug problem, as we then threw the Taliban, the ruling clique of anti-American,Islamic crazies, who were controlling the drug trade, out of Afghanistan. Almost needless to say, finally, we're responsible for the mess in Iraq, and the deaths of British troops there. Did I mention that, beyond its undoubted competence as a mystery/thriller, the film is very anti-American, and will infuriate some possible viewers, who'd best give it a miss?

Fitz is so endearing because he is truly flawed. He smokes, gambles and definitely drinks too much. Just ask his daughter what she thinks about the toast he gave to her groom at their wedding. Yet, he manages to solve the latest string of murder cases by interrogating and exposing the culprit even though the police constable doesn't really listen to his ideas. And Fitz is brutally honest to his wife when he admits to her that he would rather spend time with the police officers than with his own grandchild. In response to the reviewers who thought the episode was too political and anti-American, I say that Cracker has always taken on the controversial issues of it's time. That is one of the factors which make the detective story seem realistic and intriguing to its fans. The worthwhile special features on the DVD include interviews with Robbie Coltrane, Jimmy McGovern, Barbara Flynn, Chris Eccleston and other members of the cast and creative team.

Recently, AV Club had an article decrying the anti-hero as an overused trope. Dr. House, Tony Soprano, Nurse Betty, Larry David have taken over and now no one can be simply heroic without having a major drug problem or being a sociopath. While I don't completely agree with the article, I kept thinking about when I saw this creation.

Robbie Coltrane who is usually quite funny and amusing is straitjacketed by this character. He's surly and mean. His drunken rants which embarrass his daughter at her wedding and lead him to ignore his wife and kid would be endearingly iconoclastic if he wasn't so nasty about it. He's like those people whom you think are being amusingly cranky for effect (Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Seasons 1-6 has Larry David swearing and cursing his way through life for example) but then turn out to be just meanspirited. This is a shame since Hugh Laurie has a similar character with Dr. House and yet he makes the cranky vicodin addict strangely endearing (and sometimes agonizingly repentant and human). Maybe the series was better, but I have only this DVD to judge. And in this particular two hour movie, he's just an awful unpleasant crank. If I want to spend two hours with awful unpleasant drunks, I'll visit my cousins more often.

However, the horrible main character is only part of the problem. The show would even rate a couple of stars if only the story wasn't so dull. Moving at a snail's pace, the story about a former British soldier dealing with his PTSD by killing Americans plods along with a horrible dullness. He's not an engaging villain. The tension is non-existent and everything is just leading to an inevitable confrontation without surprises.

But what really makes this show unbearable is the way the screenwriter injects his politics into every single scene. My British friends tell me that this show was praised for being political, but there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with political issues. See The Wire: The Complete Series where drug enforcement, unions, municipal politics, school systems and newspapers are roasted with the ferocity of a thwarted idealist and yet the humanity comes through and the writer knows that it's about characters.

There is no character in this movie. There's only one guy ranting and raving about all those darn Americans and their hypocrisy. The Iraqi war is wrong. The Afghanistan war is wrong. America had 9/11 coming to it. Americans are hypocrites for funding the Irish Republican Army and its campaign of terror and then getting angry when other terrorists attack America (we also funded the Zionists who ran a much more successful campaign of terror against the British in 1947 when they wouldn't get out of Israel - thankfully, the screenwriter is merely tedious and not anti-semitic). The show even outright lies in places, like when the villain claims that Manchester was much more peaceful when the Taliban was in Afghanistan because the Taliban stopped the drug trade to Manchester but then the Americans ruined it. Considering that the Taliban funded their operations from their heroin trade, that's not only a lie, but it's a stupid lie since anyone who actually reads newspapers can see through it.

But that doesn't matter to the screenwriter. Instead, he cares about the fact that America is bad. And he's angry, gosh darnit. Forget about telling a compelling story with interesting characters. He would prefer to rant and rave against the evil America. And who can be bothered with entertaining an audience when you are yelling at them?

I was waiting for this one for a long time. "Fitz" is brilliant, as usual. And (as usual) he continues to be self-destructive. Having been away from England for 10 years, Fitz returns for his daughter's wedding but ends up helping the police crack open a murder investigation. The episode is truly worthwhile because it is used to highlight the differences between the "old" and the "new" i.e. the old city vs the new city, the old police department vs the new department, old crime vs new terror threat. The amazing thing is that even though everything has changed, Fitz hasn't. And it is precisely for that reason that he succeeds here also.

This is the final episode in the very fine and enjoyable story about a psychologist, Fitz, who has severe disruptive psychological problems: he drinks and gambles too much and he prefers to help the police rather than be with his family. These problems disturb his patient wife. Fitz and his wife, who lived in Australia for a decade, return to England for a daughter's wedding. He is drunk at the wedding and makes inappropriate remarks. They find England changed because of the Iraq war and terrorism. While this is an opportunity for Fitz and his wife to spend time with grandchildren, Fitz chooses instead to help the police find a person who killed an American comic. We are shown the murder and the murderer. We see how the man has been traumatized by the war in Northern Ireland seeing his mates killed. He is bitter against the Americans who he holds responsible because they supplied the guns and other weapons, directly and indirectly, in Northern Ireland and Iraq. Fitz's deductions are clever and fun to watch, although a couple are questionable, such as when he tells the police that when men urinate in a public toilet with three adjacent basins, they generally choose one near the end, and if a man is killed in a public toilet it must have been a spontaneous unplanned murder.

OK. This is Cracker's last story, and it works hard on getting things set pretty quickly. You miss some old characters but that's the way some of these "reunion" last episodes are. The problem is that in the middle of the video it starts to feel like too many things were done to just show one more case, but character development wasn't clear since the middle of the story. It felt more like all the changes you saw in the beginning were slowly erased as they were all getting "back to the old habits".
To me, it felt so inconclusive. Not the cliffhanger/I-want-to-see-more kind but something disappointing instead. And in the end, it becomes just one more case, not the time to say good-bye to a character or a story you like, but just one last time to see the show.

Except for a surprise about a third into the show, this cop story is so predictable that I don't feel guilty about talking in detail about the plot, though I'll try not to spoil anything important. But you've been warned.

This story is ruined by copying American cop show cliches (both in the subject matter of the story and in the TV techniques used to tell it).

There's the extended brutality of a junkie being beaten senseless.

After flashbacks of a killer's memory of dead children lying on a floor, we see our hero climb stairs to where he knows there are children. We see the legs of the children on the floor, motionless, then we see our hero's pained face, then we see the children alive and smiling, watching TV (just like we are at this point). Why the horrified expression on our hero if the kids are all right? It's just a gimmick.

One of the things this story supposedly tries to do is make Americans look bad.

One of the victims is an American who's "sniffing around our women" and who treats the Manchester police like valets (in the American, not the British, sense of the word).

Most of the killer's victims are Americans who show a lack of respect for the British military. (It's a joke about the British in Northern Ireland that triggers the first murder, not anything to do with Bush's war in Iraq or his "lap dog" Tony Blair.)

In fact, the cause of all these murders is Britain's occupation of Belfast, not the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

As it turns out, the Manchester police would have found the killer just as soon even if they hadn't enticed Fitz away from his family.

Of course Fitz confronts the killer and gets him to admit to trying to get the police to kill him because he's afraid to commit suicide. But it looks to me like it's Fitz who's trying to get the killer to kill him, because Fitz can't deal any more with being a drunk and a compulsive gambler who's driven all the people who love him away. (This scene is a cheat, too, making it seem the killer may be granting Fitz his self-destructive wish, but you know he can't be.)

This whole story could have been told if the attacks on September 11 had never happened. I think the producers just wanted to make the story more relevant by tying it to what what Robert Harris in The Ghost: A Novel called "a new Hundred Years War."

I imagine Robbie Coltrane and Jimmy McGovern had high hopes for this reunion. But apparently Mr. McGovern had a political ax to grind that got in the way of creating a truly Fitz-worthy yarn. And the episode seemed lacking in Fitz for stretches of time, much of which was spent establishing the state of mind driving a killer. And then Fitz found himself working alone, alone without the dynamic generated among his familiar cast of disparagers at the Manchester PD. None of those cops are even present in this episode, perhaps having read the script before signing on. Instead we see a squad of strangers whose character and disposition have no time to develop. And the dark, gritty look of the earlier episodes has been dressed up with a number of sunny scenes quite out of keeping with our expectation of Fitz's Manchester. Altogether not a fitting tribute to a superior series.

It doesn't really seem plausible that Fitz could survive away from Manchester's Police department. Presumably he's found similar work in Australia. My only problem with the story was his embarassing performance at his daughter's wedding reception. It seems a bit of a cliche at this point. Otherwise it was an interesting turn to see the whole 9-11 issue from the outside looking in. The problem most people have with this approach lies in facing the fact that all actions (or inactions) have consequences. You can condemn those consequences but you can't honestly deny their causes.