Monsieur Spade

Just before watching this miniseries about a middle-aged Sam Spade living in France, I read an article about it's co-writer/creator/director Scott Frank and his success as a script doctor who could find a script's weaknesses and set them write. Unfortunately, Monsieur Spade needed Scott Frank the script doctor rather than Scott Frank the writer.

In Monsieur Spade, a middle-aged Sam Spade lives in France and stuff happens. But very little of it happens in episode one, which could be described as a slow boil, but is probably more accurately a low simmer with the heat turned up in the last 5 minutes. It's really rather dull, and takes its time for no good reason.

But then things pick up. A lot starts happening, people die, people threaten, Spade investigates and wisecracks, and it's all pretty good. True, there are odd bits, like the character of Jean-Pierre, who ultimately serves no purpose in the plot and isn't interesting in his own right. But for the most part it's entertaining.

And then in the final episode it goes totally off the rails in double-crosses and murders and schemes that don't make much sense, and then there's this endless discussion that more-or-less explains what happened in the most awkward and tedious way possible, and none of it holds together or offers any narrative satisfaction, and there are so many loose ends.

Come on, Scott Frank, the New Yorker painted you as having unerring instincts. WHERE DID THOSE INSTINCTS GO?

Overall, I actually did enjoy this. I like Clive Owen's Spade, even if he's no Bogie, and I liked the repartee, even if there's nothing nearly as memorable as almost every line of Maltese Falcon. The acting of the supporting cast is excellent, and the story does keep you interested before it falls apart.

Is it worth watching? Maybe. Just be forewarned.

It's 1955 rural France. Sam Spade (Clive Owen) is searching for Philippe Saint Andre, the father of his charge, a girl named Teresa. He's been hired by Teresa's late mother who is his former lover and had stolen a large sum of money. He faces many obstacles with the disappeared Philippe. He places Teresa with the nuns at a local orphanage. It's 8 years later and Teresa is turning 18. She is set to receive the large sum from a trust and her thieving father is rumored to have returned. One night, Sam finds the girls locked in their room, Teresa missing, and the nuns brutally murdered.

The story is a bit of a mess. It starts great but ends muddled. I don't like the McGuffin boy. He is really just an object rather than a living breathing character. The girl is a much better subject. It is almost a comedy when they get to the final sit-down and calling out all the characters. I really like Clive Owen doing his Sam Spade. It's impossible to get away from Bogie but this is a fun interpretation. Stay for Clive.

A show that had a lot of potential, even got off to a solid start, but the ending is hilariously bad.

At the beginning, we follow the elderly Sam Spade who has retired in France in a small rural town. Through a series of flashbacks, we find out how it happened.

The characters are generally not bad, but as the plot progressed, the writers couldn't resist without inserting modern clichés that are getting on everyone's nerves a little bit and starting to cause a complete counter effect.

One of the main villains, supposedly a monk who may or may not be, is hilarious. Ok, you don't like church, we get it, we see it in almost every new movie or series anyway, and it's already getting boring. When you see someone from the church on film, it is immediately clear that this person is almost certainly a villain. It's all become hilariously predictable.

The series had an excellent potential to give us a touch of good old entertainment and a good crime story with a bit of spy intrigue. Instead, we got another sermon, and this is especially evident in the last episode.

Speaking of the last episode, it's also the worst episode of the series, and it should be the exact opposite. The dialogues are terrible, and the sequence of events is catastrophically bad, and the direction is confusing, in some parts you can't see anything, and the action is hilarious. Yes, the action is completely unconvincing and laughable.

The addition of new characters at the last minute, who are there only to serve the scriptwriters to complete the plot and to satisfy the wishes of the producers, ruined the overall impression of the series even more. Not to mention how hilariously unrealistic it was. The resolution of everything in the end comes as a comedic effect because that's exactly what it is, a comedy.

The conversations between the characters at the end are so hilarious that they create the impression of a parody.

It's a pity, the show had potential, and it started solidly, the actors are not bad at all, but the script was worse from episode to episode, and the same with the direction. In the last episode, the main character, Samuel Spade, was reduced to a secondary character.

The last episode is so bad, that it completely destroyed the little that was good.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a complete waste of time.

I have strong contradictory feelings about this show. It starts off strong but it fizzles out terribly bad by the end.

Let me begin by saying that I am a big fan of both Owen and noir, so I walked in pretty pumped up. The first few episodes start strong: gorgeous cinematography, solid acting, a few well drawn out characters and all the cues from a proper noir old schooler (saxophone notes, cigarrette smoke, driving through a rainy night, etc). Love it so far!

But boy oh boy, does the plot get convoluted by the end! New, seemly random characters enter the scene out of the blue for no particular reason while adding absolutely nothing to the story (the CIA priest? The French intelligence officer? The algerian investigator? WTF is their purpose?!). On the other hand, the original characters' arcs pretty much slur on going nowhere (Jean Pierre? Teresa? Patrice?). Amidst all this, a text-book McGuffin (the algerian boy) is introduced to keep everybody running around aimlessly, driving the plot's attention away from what should be the center of gravity: Spade himself!

And, at last, the finale: the most bizarre and clumsy 20 minutes I have seen on TV in a long time: a buffonery of a shootout, followed by a Poirotesque whodunit scene that serves absolutely no other purpose than to explain to the perplexed audience WTF is going on and why, all of a sudden, all of the show's characters have all somehow landed at the same ending scene at the same precise moment. Ridiculous.

I know that this review has turned out more negative than I had intended. It is just my frustration showing: this show started off really great, ultimately missing its potential as episodes went by. Still, I would recommend it to noir aficionados - just accept that it'll roll downhill midway through.

PS: Owen makes a fantastic Spade. The entire show rests over his acting shoulders.

I wanted Clive Owen to channel Bogart without imitating him. I wanted to feel both post WWII France as well as one struggling in Algeria and SE Asia. I wanted that France to be intense and atmosheric. I wanted characters that I cared about. I wanted film noir in color.

I got everything I wanted and this is everything I hoped it would be.

I think too that all this may play against the ultimate popularity of this series. Some will see Owen as half of Bogart, lacking depth, perhaps, and missing the slow burn that Bogie brought to the screen. Others, sadly, may have never seen Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and wonder why they aren't seeing a more recognizable Clive Owen.

Either way you look at it, if you watched episode one this clearly interests you, and good, bad, or indifferent we all owe it to modern noir to see it through if we ever want to see anyone continue to pursue the genre. And yes, I loved Perry Mason also, and watched every episode of an all too short run.