Below is a list of my top five favorite episodes from Season One of Netflix's series, "HOUSE OF CARDS", a remake of the 1990-1995 BBC miniseries trilogy that was based upon Michael Dobbs' 1989 novel. Produced and developed by Beau Willimon, the series stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright."TOP FIVE FAVORITE "HOUSE OF CARDS" SEASON ONE (2013) Episodes
1. (1.05) "Chapter Five" - Congressman Frank Underwood's feud against a union over the Education Bill threatens his wife Claire's charity gala and her own ambitions. And journalist Zoe Barnes mixes work with play.
2. (1.11) "Chapter Eleven" - Angry at Frank, Claire reconnects with former flame, photojournalist Adam Galloway. And when junior Congressman Peter Russo wrestles with his personal demons and considers confessing his and Frank's sins, the latters decides that he has become a liability that needs to be eliminated.
3. (1.02) "Chapter Two" - Utilizing Zoe's help, Frank plants a story that loosely ties Michael Kern, the President's pick for Secretary of State, to an anti-Israel editorial that appeared in the college newspaper Kern edited.
4. (1.06) "Chapter Six" - Frank strikes back at the striking teachers by undermining the credibility of the teachers' union representative, Martin Spinella. Claire is caught off guard by a deathbed confession from one of Frank's personal bodyguards.
5. (1.13) "Chapter Thirteen" - Frank accepts the recently vacated Vice-President post from the President. Claire learns that she is being sued for wrongful termination by a former employee. And Zoe becomes increasingly aware of Frank's plots in this season finale.
"THE BOURNE LEGACY" (2012) Review
Following the success of the 2007 movie, "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM", Universal Pictures announced its intentions to release a fourth movie featuring the amnesiac CIA assassin, Jason Bourne. However, their plans nearly folded when actor Matt Damon announced that he would not do a fourth movie.
Damon's announcement failed to put a final kibosh on Universal's plans. Instead, the studio and writer-director Tony Gilroy went ahead with another movie about the CIA assassination programs in which Jason Bourne had participated. Instead of bringing back director Paul Greengrass, Universal and Gilroy (who had written the first three movies) hired Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner to portray a second CIA assassin - Aaron Cross. With Gilroy in the director's chair, the results led to the fourth movie called "THE BOURNE LEGACY".
The movie's title came from Eric Van Lustbader's 2004 novel, but its plot is completely different. "THE BOURNE LEGACY" introduced a third black ops program called Operation Outcome. Unlike Operations Treadstone and Blackbriar, Outcome was specifically created by the U.S. Department of Defense and it enhances the physical and mental abilities of field operatives through pills referred to as "chems". The movie opens with one of its operatives - Aaron Cross - engaged in a training assignment in Alaska. After Cross traverses rugged terrain to a remote cabin, he meets its operator, an exiled Outcome operative, Number Three.
During Cross' time in Alaska, the Blackbriar and Treadstone programs are publicly being exposed (during the events of the previous film, "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM"), leading the FBI and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy, Blackbriar supervisor Noah Vosen, Treadstone clinical researcher Dr. Albert Hirsch and CIA Director Ezra Kramer. Kramer requests help from Eric Byer, a retired Air Force colonel responsible for overseeing the CIA's clandestine operations. Byer, who had originally recruited Cross, discovers potentially damaging video on the Internet in which the lead researchers for Treadstone and Outcome - especially Hirsch - appear at professional functions in public. To prevent the Treadstone/Blackbriar investigation from finding and revealing Outcome's top-secret scientific advances, Byer decides to end Outcome and kill its agents and medical personnel. He sees this sacrifice as acceptable because the government has already separately initiated next-generation "beta programs".
Byer attempts to kill both Cross and Number Three by sending a drone bomb to destroy the cabin. Number Three is killed and Cross manages to survive, due to being outside when the bomb dropped. Byer makes another attempt to kill Cross with a second drone and unbeknownst to him, ends up killing a wolf pack. Cross learns of a massacre at Outcome's private research lab, conducted by a chemically brainwashed scientist. The sole survivor is geneticist Dr. Marta Shearing, whom Cross later saves from CIA assassins. He hopes that Dr. Shearing can help him wean or "viral" off the chemicals and at the same time, save both of them from being killed by Byer and the Department of Defense.
When Universal first leaked news of a fourth movie with Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, I did not exactly embrace the idea. As far as I was concerned, three was enough. When Damon announced that he would not reprise the Bourne role, I felt a surge of relief. As much as I had enjoyed the third BOURNE movie, I felt it was a bit of a comedown after the first two movies. Then I heard news that Universal and Tony Gilroy was going ahead with a fourth movie . . . without Damon. Again, I dismissed the idea of going to see this new BOURNE movie, until I learned that Jeremy Renner had been cast in the lead. Since I am a fan of Renner's, I decided to go see this fourth film. However, I did not believe I would enjoy it as much as the first three.
Like all of the films in the movie franchise, "THE BOURNE LEGACY" is not perfect. One, I never understood the need for Tony Gilroy to create a third black ops program. Considering that Treadstone and the current Blackbriar programs were in danger of exposure by the end of "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM", I was surprised that Gilroy did not simply make Cross a Blackbriar operative. In other words, I found the addition of a third black ops program rather irrelevant. Unfortunately, the movie also featured the continuing presence of CIA Director Ezra Kramer. His presence in the third movie struck me as writing blooper on Gilroy's part. His presence in this fourth movie is a continuation of that blooper. For some reason, Gilroy decided to utilize Paul Greengrass' shaky cam style of filming in some of the scense . . . much to my annoyance. My biggest problem with "THE BOURNE LEGACY" was the ending. I found it vague, rather sudden and anti-climatic. When the movie ended with Cross and Dr. Shearing somewhere in the South China Seas and Pamela Lundy in trouble with Federal authorities for revealing the details of the Treadstone and Blackbriar programs, the first words that left my mouth were "Is that it?". As far as I was concerned, the BOURNE franchise required a fifth movie to tie up the loose plots.
Despite the ending, despite the continuing presence of Ezra Kramer and despite the Greengrass filming and editing style; I enjoyed "THE BOURNE LEGACY" very much. Who am I kidding? I enjoyed it a lot. In fact, After seven years, I finally realized that it is my favorite movie in the franchise. I feel that Gilroy did a pretty good job of meshing the plot from "THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM" with this film. A throwaway discussion between Kramer and Noah Vosen regarding Pamela Lundy in the third film finally came to fruition by the end of this movie. The movie also explored - during most of its 135 minutes - Cross' difficulties in dealing with his dependency upon the "chems", the medication that enhanced both his physical and medical condition. Like the other movies in the franchise, "THE BOURNE LEGACY" featured some first-rate action sequences. My favorites include Cross' use of a wolf pack to distract the second drone bomb from himself, the massacre at the Operation Outcome lab that featured a chilling performance by Željko Ivanek, and the long chase sequence in Manila, the Philippines. But my favorite sequence featured Cross' rescue of Dr. Shearing from the CIA assassins.
The best thing that Tony Gilroy ever did for this movie was to avoid making Aaron Cross into a Jason Bourne 2.0. He did this by creating Cross as a completely personality - verbose, more extroverted and an acute judge of character. But what really made Cross worked as a character was Jeremy Renner's performance. Some critic once said that what was the point in watching a BOURNE movie without Matt Damon. Well, the first BOURNE production I ever saw was the 1988 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain. And he was great. I also enjoyed Damon as Bourne, but . . . honestly? I did not really miss him, due to Renner's performance.
The movie also benefited from Rachel Weisz's excellent performance as Operation Outcome medical researcher, Dr. Marta Shearing. Weisz's Shearing was a quiet, intense personality, whose ordered life was thrown upside down by her brainwashed colleague and later, the CIA. Weisz was exceptional in the scene featuring the CIA assassins' murder attempt on her. More importantly, the actress and Renner proved to have a superb and somewhat humorous screen chemistry. Another excellent performance came from Edward Norton, who portrayed the ex-Air Force colonel Eric Byer. What I liked about Norton's performance was that he portrayed Byer without the occasional frantic behavior that marked David Strathairn or Chris Cooper's performances. Stacy Keach, whom I have not seen in several years, portrayed a high ranking Federal official named Mark Turso. I cannot recall ever seeing him in a villainous role (at least not to my knowledge), but I must admit that I found his performance very impressive. Oscar Isaac, whom I last saw in "STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII - THE LAST JEDI" and "TRIPLE FRONTIER", gave an effective and subtle performance as the other Outcome agent, Number Three. It was nice to see Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn and Albert Finney again. But they were not on the screen long enough for me to judge their performances. However, I did enjoy supporting performances from the likes of Donna Murphy, Dennis Boutsikaris, Michael Chernus, Corey Stoll, Elizabeth Marvel, Louis Ozawa Changchien and especially Željko Ivanek, who gave both a poignant and later, scary performance as Marta Shearing's colleague, Donald Foite.
Like I had earlier stated, "THE BOURNE LEGACY" was not perfect. But I more than enjoyed it very much. Not long after the film's release, Universal Studios had decided to green light a fifth film with Jeremy Renner reprising his role as Aaron Cross. His performance, along with Rachel Weisz and the rest of the cast, made this movie very enjoyable for me, along with a script that I believe was simply better than the franchise's other films. Unfortunately, that second film with Renner and Weisz never materialized. Damn.
