Is
Robert Parker's Spenser character really so interesting that, after having
his own eponymous series, he's now a worthy protagonist for a telefilm
franchise? The answer, based upon this second A&E original with Joe
Mantegna as the private dick, is a resounding ``not a chance in hell, man.''
``Thin
Air'' lacks a baseline level of believability, but that's not the primary
problem. Everything here, from Spenser's double entendres and unfunny wisecracks
to the broadly caricatured villain, is numbingly hackneyed.
Director
Robert Mandel tries to make up for the absence of an interesting script
with some noirish touches, but this film has all the atmosphere of a vacuum.
Telepic
begins with two violent episodes that are apparently supposed to draw in
the audience. In the first, Lisa (Yancy Butler) is abducted by her long-ago
former boyfriend Luis (Jon Seda).
In
the second, Spenser saves his therapist-girlfriend Susan by putting a bullet
between a guy's eyes. The connection between the two incidents involves
Lisa's husband Frank, who investigates Spenser's shooting, and then tells
the legendary P.I. that his wife is missing. When Luis shoots Frank a couple
of days later, Spenser gets on the case.
As
Spenser investigates and peels away the facts of Lisa's past entanglements,
Luis keeps Lisa hostage in a run-down inner-city building project where
he operates as a dictator. He has Lisa dress in gorgeous costume gowns
and lets her know that he's kidnapped her as his bride.
The
psychological depth of Parker's script, based on his book, reaches a nadir
with the conclusion that Luis, whose mother was a prostitute and drug addict,
watched too much television as a kid and has difficulty telling the difference
between fiction and reality. Consider Luis a strange mixture of Stalin
and Forrest Gump.
Seda
(''Homicide: Life on the Street'') has evidently been taking acting lessons
from Arnold Schwarzenegger of late.
Mantegna
has been much praised for his work with writer David Mamet, and deservedly
so. What he does especially well as an actor is to stay out of a writer's
way, leaving language unadorned and to the point. It works when the dialogue
is sharp and nuanced. But his purposefully superficial style makes empty
writing feel, well, empty.
It's
a relief when Luis Guzman comes on the scene as Spenser's freelance sidekick
Chollo, bringing lots of attitude to his role. There's some decent chemistry
between the two, but Parker works relentlessly at being clever and falls
flat continuously.
In
the end, Spenser's not much of a character and this isn't much of a story.
It ends with a big shoot out in which the bad guys can't hit anything and
the good guys can't miss. We've seen it all before. There's a seedy tone
to this pic, and only some of that is intended.
