Wiseguy

Along with Hill Street Blues and possibly Crime Story, Wiseguy was one of the earliest attempts at creating multi-episode story arcs on American network television during the 1980s. Up until that point, conventional wisdom was to have stand-alone episodes – that way a show could easily be shown out of sequence once in syndication. Created by Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo, Wiseguy featured high quality writing and a strong cast supported by an equally impressive roster of guest actors, many of whom went on to bigger things in cinema.

Cannell got the idea for the show after reading about the United States government’s deep cover program. He spent the next four or five years pitching it to the television networks but none them were interested until finally CBS agreed to make it. One of the striking elements of the show was its authenticity regarding the criminal underworld it examined in every episode. Cannell claimed that he never relied on technical advisors but rather he had “always been good at writing underworld characters. I have a friend who has a lot of friends who have been, how shall I put it – incarcerated.”

Wiseguy was a crime show that ran on American television from 1987 to 1990 and featured the exploits of Vincent “Vinnie” Terranova (Ken Wahl), an undercover agent working for the Organized Crime Bureau (OCB), a division of the FBI. His job was to infiltrate criminal organizations, gather evidence, destroy them from within, and bring those guilty to justice. The show does a fantastic job of maintaining a certain level of tension once Vinnie goes undercover as he is constantly in danger, especially dealing with unpredictable people like many of the criminals he encounters. Fortunately, he excels at thinking on his feet.

The first season featured two of the show’s most memorable arcs. Upon being released from prison (to establish his criminal credentials), Vinnie is assigned to infiltrate the Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey) organization after his brother Dave killed Vinnie’s training agent who had previously been investigating the crime family. Vinnie gradually works his way up and manages to gain Sonny’s confidence. Ray Sharkey is incredible as the unpredictable crime boss that constantly keeps Vinnie on his toes. He’s understandably cagey as deals get busted and henchmen are killed.

Vinnie answers to Frank McPike (played with wonderfully sarcastic dry wit by Jonathan Banks) and he is the one that assigns Vinnie his cases and supplies him with crucial information. Vinnie’s other contact is Lifeguard (Jim Byrnes), whom he contacts on a regular basis with updates on the case under the guise of Uncle Mike, in case the phone is being tapped. One of the things that is so good about Wiseguy is that it takes the time to show how being so deep undercover takes its toll on Vinnie. He comes so close to death on a regular basis and has to be a hell of an actor because his life depends on it.

The first season’s second story arc, and arguably the best one of the show’s entire run, saw Vinnie go after the multi-billionaire international arms dealer Mel Profitt (Kevin Spacey). In the process, Vinnie uncovers a crime syndicate in a whole other league than anything he’s experienced before. His way into this particular organization is through assassin Roger Loccoco (William Russ), who works for Profitt. Vinnie does a good job of establishing his cover – a Jersey triggerman who maybe small-time but knows enough about firearms to pique Roger’s interest. Their first encounter is a memorable one, crackling with tough-guy-speak as these two Alpha Males sniff each other out. Vinnie meets Mel’s beautiful sister Susan (Joan Severance) through Roger and she in turn introduces him to Mel.

I like how this story arc takes the time to give us a nice snapshot of the friction that exists between the CIA and the FBI. There’s an interesting scene where McPike butts heads with a local FBI officer and a CIA agent. Jonathan Banks shines in this scene with his trademark dry wit. At one point, the CIA agent verifies that McPike is who he says he is and without missing a beat he replies, “Most of my life. I was Batman in the third grade but that seems to have passed.” According to the actor, McPike was originally written as a “big, red-headed guy, strong and a lot more straightforward and burly.” He brought a dry, sarcastic wit to the role and the writers ran with it. The creator of Breaking Bad had to have been a fan of Wiseguy as the casting of Banks on that show contains echoes of his work in this earlier crime drama.

Not surprisingly, the one to watch is a young Kevin Spacey as the crazy, power-hungry Mel. His first appearance is a memorable one as he rants and rages about someone trying to poison his food. All the money and power he’s acquired has made him extremely paranoid. In another memorable bit, Mel interrupts a wedding of his Argentinian drug connection because he doesn’t trust the man’s soon-to-be wife. It is an audacious move and Spacey pulls it off with charm and conviction. Mel is a larger than life criminal mastermind seemingly coming apart at the seams and yet manages to just keep it together enough to run his vast empire – thanks to Susan and a regular shot of heroin. Spacey does a fantastic job giving depth to this first class nutjob, knowing when to chew up the scenery and when to pull it back.

William Russ is excellent as the ultra-confident amoral hitman who has a habit of referring to Vinnie, and everybody else he encounters, as “Buckwheat.” The actor brings a dangerous, unpredictable vibe to his character, which keeps Vinnie and us on edge early on. Russ had all kinds of memorable roles over the years, most notably in The Right Stuff (1983) and the T.V. show Crime Story. Joan Severance is quite alluring as the seductive femme fatale and she has good chemistry with Ken Wahl. As Susan tells Vinnie early on, “Most people are intrigued by my brother and me. I know a lot about intrigue. I intrigue everyone.” Susan is more than just a potentially dangerous love interest for Vinnie as the show hints at an incestuous relationship with her brother Mel. She plays well off of Spacey and it reminded me of what a shame that her career went down the rabbit hole of direct-to-video erotic thrillers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At the end of season one, burnt-out from a grueling undercover assignment, Vinnie threatens to resign. Frank puts him on a six-month extended leave of absence instead. Vinnie decides to return home to Brooklyn in an attempt to clear his head and enjoy some semblance of a regular life. Meanwhile, Frank gets promoted and his superiors put pressure on him to bring Vinnie back to work.

After a short story arc that saw Vinnie deal with a small group of white supremacists trying to take over his neighborhood, Wiseguy settled into its next memorable storyline. Eli Sternberg (Jerry Lewis) and his son David (Ron Silver) are clothing manufacturers struggling to reach a deadline on an order and need a lot of money fast. Eli makes a deal with Enrico Pinzolo (Stanley Tucci), a local businessman/loan shark who controls the garment industry via trucking. Unhappy with what his father has done, David asks the OCB for their help and in doing so help them bring down Pinzolo. Comedian Jerry Lewis holds his own and shows off his dramatic chops against solid character actors like Ron Silver and Stanley Tucci. It’s great to see these guys bounce off each other and sink their teeth in this excellent material.

Season three begins with Vinnie’s stepfather and Mafioso boss shot and gravely wounded in a mob hit. When another don is hit, Vinnie teams up with the head of a rival family (Robert Davi) to find out who from one of the other families ordered these hits. Robert Davi, who’s appeared in a lot of crappy films and T.V. shows, gets a meaty role to demonstrate what an underrated talent he is by eloquently delivering substantial monologues and playing an honorable tough guy.

After Ken Wahl had a dispute with the show’s producers and left the show before the start of the fourth season, his character was written out and replaced with the much less interesting Michael Santana (Steven Bauer), a United States attorney based in Miami. When his case against a powerful leader of a drug cartel falls apart due to a flawed arrest warrant based on information illegally beaten out of an informant, Santana is disbarred. McPike seeks him out in order to help find Vinnie who has run afoul of the same cartel. While Steven Bauer is a fine actor, it was hard to empathize with his character like you could with Vinnie whom viewers had grown attached to over three seasons. The ratings declined and Wiseguy was canceled after this season.

Ken Wahl does a great job over the course of the show balancing Vinnie’s tough guy act when he goes undercover and showing how staying under so long affects his emotional and mental stability while also wreaking havoc on his personal life – what’s left of it anyway. With every story arc, Vinnie is our entry point into a new criminal enterprise and part of the enjoyment of the show comes from watching how he’s going to infiltrate the criminal organization and not blow his cover. Sometimes his dilemma isn’t whether he’ll get caught or not but rather will he be tempted by the lure of power and money that surrounds him?

The show’s producers approached Wahl for role of Vinnie Terranova. The actor claimed that he decided to do Wiseguy because “I wasn’t offered any films and I’ve got to make a living.” At the time of the show, he seemed blasé in his approach to the character in interviews, saying, “I’m winging it with this character and as long as they like what I’m doing, I’ve got my job.”

Wiseguy plugs in the tried and true tropes of ‘80s crime shows with gun fights and car chases but they almost seem like an afterthought, something to appease mainstream audiences. The real fireworks are between Vinnie and the colorful criminals he encounters, like Sonny and Mel. Wiseguy broke the mold for crime dramas. Watching these episodes again reminds one of just how good it was back in the day and how it paved the way for crime shows like The Sopranos and The Wire among others.

SOURCES

Baker, Kathryn. “Wiseguy Could Take Off in New Time Period.” Associated Press. December 30, 1987.

Davis, Ivor. “Crime Heavies Give Thumbs Up to the Wiseguy.” Globe and Mail. October 3, 1987.

Knutzen, Eirik. “Up Against the Wahl.” Toronto Star. November 28, 1987.

Raw Deal

Wedged between high profile box office hits Commando (1985) and Predator (1987), Raw Deal (1986) has become something of a forgotten movie in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career. It was a gritty crime story made at a time when the action star could seemingly do no wrong with every movie doing well at the box office. Not so with Raw Deal, which barely made a profit in comparison to action movie rival Sylvester Stallone and his own crime movie Cobra (1986), which was a huge hit. Both were hyper-violent movies with a large body count, but Raw Deal was a little too generic, a little too formulaic despite Schwarzenegger’s trademark humor. Or maybe audiences couldn’t buy an Austrian bodybuilder infiltrating his way into the Italian mafia.

When a mob witness and the FBI agents protecting him are brutally murdered by an efficient team of mafia hitmen from the Patrovita family, Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin), the father of one of the men killed, seeks out an old friend, Mark Kaminsky (Arnold Schwarzenegger). He’s a disgraced ex-FBI agent now sheriff of a small town who spends his time catching speeders and arguing with his drunk wife (Blanche Baker). When she hurls a freshly baked cake (with the word, “shit” scrawled on it no less) at him, he merely dodges it and replies dryly, “You should not drink and bake,” in what is possible the worst line ever uttered in a Schwarzenegger movie. You have to give credit to the screenwriters – Gary DeVore and Norman Wexler – for actually trying to give Schwarzenegger’s character some semblance of a backstory and actual conflict in the form of marital strife.

Mark meets with Harry who tells him of his desire of revenge for his son’s death. He asks Mark to go undercover in the Patrovita organization and destroy it from within. In exchange, Harry will pull some strings to get Mark reinstated as an FBI agent. Putting up Schwarzenegger against an old pro like Darren McGavin was probably not a good idea as it only highlights his lack of acting skills. McGavin is quite good as the grieving father determined to take down Patrovita at any cost. So, Mark fakes his own death and Harry sets him up with a new identity – Joseph P. Brenner from Miami (?!) – and bankrolls the clandestine operation.

Mark goes about getting noticed by the Patrovita organization in typical Schwarzenegger fashion – by breaking up a crooked gambling operation run by a rival mob outfit led by Martin Lamanski (Steven Hill). There’s something almost comforting about the movie’s paint-by-numbers action sequences that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of The A-Team and are filmed and edited so cleanly that we always know what’s going on as Mark busts some heads and then drives a truck into the joint.

Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger work a room in Raw Deal is amusing and fascinating because he walks so stiffly, like he’s an alien trying to act like a normal human being. Even his line deliveries are robotic in nature, but you have to give him an A for effort. He is obviously more comfortable in the action sequences where he gets to beat guys up while dispensing quips. And that is part of Schwarzenegger’s charm. Admittedly, there is something inherently silly about him managing to infiltrate the mob by merely slicking back his hair and wearing expensive suits, but let’s face it, with every one of his movies you have to suspend your sense of disbelief. However, Raw Deal’s premise pushes it perhaps too much – hence its disappointing box office returns. Audiences just weren’t buying him in this role.

The script clumsily attempts a romance between Mark and Monique (Kathryn Harrold), a beautiful gambler, that results in our hero passing out before he gets anywhere with her in bed. Of course, it’s all a ruse because Mark is still loyal to his wife and Monique is spying on him for Max Keller (Robert Davi), the right-hand man to Patrovita’s (Sam Wanamaker) top enforcer Paulo Rocca (Paul Shenar). Poor Kathryn Harrold is saddled with the thankless gangster moll role, but gets a bit of a backstory with Monique’s gambling problem and actually helps Mark out in a scene where a bunch of Lamanski’s goons try to work him over. She gets in a few shots instead of being a helpless damsel in distress. God bless her, Harrold gives it all she has and really sells the mundane dialogue as best she can.

The always interesting to watch Robert Davi shows up as a thug who puts on classy airs, but is supposed to be showing Mark the ropes even though he’d rather hang him by them. Davi is one of those guys that exudes an authentic tough guy vibe and he gives his scenes with Schwarzenegger a palpable sense of menace. Maybe I’ve seen him playing a good guy in too many episodes of Law & Order, but I just couldn’t buy Steven Hill as a rival mob boss. He looks too frail and out of place among the gangsters. He also doesn’t get much to do and the scenes he has are unconvincing.

Another problem with Raw Deal is that it doesn’t have a bad guy who provides a credible threat to Schwarzenegger’s character. Commando had a memorable villain in the crazed Bennett, played with over-the-top gusto by Vernon Wells (The Road Warrior), and Predator had a nearly invisible alien picking off the movie’s team of badass protagonists in deadly efficient fashion. In comparison, Raw Deal has Sam Wanamaker’s blustery mob boss who doesn’t do much but yell at his underlings and wastes Paul Shenar (Scarface) as an ineffectual right-hand man. I had hopes that Robert Davi would step up get a chance to go toe-to-toe with Schwarzenegger at the movie’s climax, but his character is dispatched partway through and his absence leaves a sizable void that is never filled.

Not surprisingly, Raw Deal was savaged by critics. Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-a-half stars and wrote, “It replaces absolutely everything – plot, dialogue, character, logic, sanity, plausibility, art, taste and style – with a fetish for nonstop action.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Though the language is vulgar, the macho posturing absurd and some of the plotting inscrutable, Raw Deal has a kind of seemliness to it.” The Los Angeles Times’ Sheila Benson wrote, “Actually, it’s the audience who needs the sympathy; Schwarzenegger seems faintly bemused but game for the script’s most howling excesses; he simply lowers his head and gets on with the action.” Finally, Gene Siskel gave the film one star and wrote, “How can you screw up an Arnold Schwarzenegger action picture? All you have to do is give the guy a gun and tell him to shoot.”

In some respects, Raw Deal is reminiscent of the television show Wiseguy, which also featured a cop going undercover to fight crime, only way more violent and not as well written or acted. What saves it from being a total waste of time is the perverse, dare I say cheeky, sense of humor occasionally at work, like when Mark casually takes out one of Patrovita’s gravel pits full of anonymous flunkies with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones blasting on the soundtrack. Naturally, the highlight of Raw Deal is its climax when Schwarzenegger goes into killing machine mode, transforming into a one-man-army as he take out a room full of on Patrovita’s men.

Raw Deal is one of those ‘80s action movies that you don’t have to think too hard about (or at all), but just enjoy it for what it is – a competently made genre piece with car chases and shoot-outs. And so this movie was considered a hiccup in an otherwise successful run of movies in the ‘80s for Schwarzenegger as he went on to make Predator and a string of other very successful efforts, continuing his cinematic competition with Stallone. Raw Deal tends to be a forgotten movie in Schwarzenegger’s career and watching it again only reinforces why this is the case.

Licence to Kill

Has enough time passed so that Timothy Dalton’s brief stint as James Bond can be re-evaluated? I have to admit that I was not taken with his debut outing, The Living Daylights (1987), with its ties to the Roger Moore era (it was written while he was still Bond), it felt a little too milquetoast, but the leaner, meaner follow-up Licence to Kill (1989) was a big improvement. Essentially a revenge movie, it saw Bond go rogue to avenge a friend that made things more personal for 007 – something that we hadn’t seen since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). At the time, Licence to Kill was criticized for being too brutal in its depiction of violence and not as humorous as previous efforts. Interestingly, it is this grittier approach that anticipated Daniel Craig’s current run as Bond.

The film opens up with Bond (Timothy Dalton) en route to the wedding of his DEA buddy Felix Leiter (David Hedison) in Key West, Florida. However, Felix is informed (via a passing Coast Guard helicopter no less) that notorious drug lord Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) has been spotted in the Bahamas. Obviously, the DEA agent has been after this guy for some time and can’t pass up an opportunity to get him, so he takes off with Bond along for the ride as only an “observer” (yeah, right). Sanchez is as nasty as they come, traveling to the Bahamas to retrieve his estranged girlfriend Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto) from a man she ran off with. While he “disciplines” the beautiful young woman by whipping her lower back, his psychotic enforcer Dario (Benicio del Toro) kills her lover.

With Bond’s help, Felix captures Sanchez and they both manage to parachute and land out in front of the church just in time for the wedding. So far this seems like business as usual for a Bond film with the trademark exciting prologue, but after the typically stylish opening credits with the theme song belted out with gusto by Gladys Knight, Licence to Kill takes a decidedly darker turn as Sanchez not only escapes protective custody, with the help of a double-crossing DEA official (Everett McGill), but exacts some nasty revenge on Felix. First, Sanchez has Dario rape and kill Felix’s wife (Priscilla Barnes) and then feeds the DEA agent to a hungry shark.

On his way home, Bond hears about Sanchez’s escape and heads back to Felix’s house to find what’s left of the bride and groom (incredibly, Felix is still alive, just barely). Bond makes it his personal mission in life to track down Sanchez and destroy him and his operation even if it means disobeying a director order from M (Robert Brown), his superior, and having his license to kill revoked.

Timothy Dalton does an excellent job in Licence to Kill, building on the foundation he established with his first outing and one wonders how much better he could have been if he had returned to the role. Sadly, it was the last time he got to play the iconic character. The actor is quite convincing as the normally objective secret agent who is driven to extremes when a close friend is almost killed. Much like Sanchez, loyalty is important to Bond and both men are willing to kill when it is put to the test. Early on, Dalton shows a fun-loving Bond enjoying a rare lull between globetrotting adventures, and when things get deadly he is all business. This time, though, when he’s efficiently dispatching bad guys, it’s personal, each one killed for Felix and his wife.

For all of his ruthlessness, Sanchez does live by his own code, valuing loyalty over everything else, which, of course, is the Achilles’ heel that Bond uses as leverage to infiltrate the drug lord’s organization. Robert Davi is excellent as Sanchez, giving the brutal baddie his own unique spin, like the sly smile he gives when the DEA loads him into an armored truck bound for prison. In several scenes there is a mischievous glint in Davi’s eyes as if to suggest that Sanchez gets off on the brutality he inflicts on others. He even has a whimsical affectation in the form of a pet iguana that sports a diamond-encrusted collar.

The lovely Carey Lowell plays CIA informant Pam Bouvier, one of Felix’s contacts, and whom Bond first meets at a scuzzy bar where she brandishes a shotgun when Dario and his buddies show up, so you know she can handle herself. It’s a pretty amusing introduction as Pam and Bond meet and start a bar room brawl. She’s smart, beautiful, tough, and a crackerjack pilot, but even she can’t resist Bond’s charms. Lowell’s appearance takes on a decidedly sexier turn when Pam transforms herself into Bond’s “executive secretary,” complete with a no-nonsense short hairdo and shimmering evening dress when they crash Sanchez’s swanky casino.

Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton has a comical turn as a cheesy television evangelist and Sanchez middleman, aptly named Professor Joe Butcher complete with faux sincere catch phrase, “Bless your heart.” Newton displays an oily charm that is pretty funny, especially when Professor Joe tries to get Pam alone for a personal “meditation” session and manages to keep his cool even when she turns the tables on him. Talisa Soto is the requisite eye candy and set up as the obvious stunning beauty of the film, but I always found Lowell much more attractive. Benicio del Toro brings a certain psychotic reptilian charm to his role, but gets little to do other than glower menacingly and failure to kill Bond on several occasions.

There’s certainly no shortage of exciting action sequences in Licence to Kill, like when Bond waterskies behind a drug-running plane with his feet and attached via a harpoon gun! Even the final showdown between Bond and Sanchez is much more savage and visceral than one usually finds in these films, but it had to be that way because of what Sanchez did earlier on. This is definitely a harder edged Bond film that gets bloody frequently, between shark attacks, human combustion and crushing, which may have also turned off fans used to the relatively bloodless Roger Moore era. Ironically, the more intense violence was an attempt to appeal the U.S. market. Even the cheesy one-liners Dalton spouts are few and far between, coming across as grimmer than usual.

That being said, Licence to Kill has all the requisite elements of a Bond film: beautiful women, a rich and powerful villain and plenty of thrilling action set pieces – it’s just that the tone is considerably darker and there is much more at stake for Bond this time out, which I found refreshing at the time. This was a rare Bond film that saw 007 get his hands dirty, both literally and figuratively. Unfortunately, the producers didn’t explore the ramifications of this until Skyfall (2012), which took a fascinating look at a Bond burnt out from the two previous films.

Like many Bond films, its villain reflects contemporary ills that plague the world and in this case drug smuggling with Sanchez representing the thriving South American drug cartels. Alas, it seems that fans weren’t crazy about a Bond revenge movie and Licence to Kill was regarded as another Dalton misfire with disappointing box office returns in North America (it was the lowest grossing of the series in the U.S.) and mixed critical reaction. By the time the next installment was made, the actor had moved on and was replaced by Pierce Brosnan. Rather interestingly, the next time the Bond franchise tried to make a revenge tale with Quantum of Solace (2008) it too was met with a critical backlash and derided by fans. As a result, Licence to Kill remains an intriguing change of pace in the Bond canon, an oddity where the filmmakers pushed the tone of the film to one extreme, almost is if compensating for the one in The Living Daylights. Perhaps if Dalton had appeared in another Bond film the powers that be would have made some adjustments to create a film with a better balance. Sadly, we will never know.

Further reading: check out John Kenneth Muir's excellent look at the film.