"Take a hammer, Emily," he said. "Take a hammer and smash everything shiny."

The Avengers

6.11: All Done with Mirrors

One I rated much more highly prior to this revisit, Leigh Vance’s teleplay for All Done with Mirrors (he’d later pen the screenplay for mid-70s Michael Caine thriller The Black Windmill) nevertheless has some appealing conceits, while Ray Austin (who would also helm half a dozen New Avengers) offers some memorable visuals.

As the title suggest, the plot revolves around reflective surfaces. They’re employed in a “retrometer” as a means for eavesdropping on and communicating with subjects in line of sight, sound being projected along a beam of light, with all the covert possibilities that suggests. What with the villains’ headquarters being a lighthouse, and being surrounding cliffs, the device makes for an effective means of luring nosy types to their doom (including Tara at one point, who survives a plunge to her death with “They pushed me clear of the rocks” – it must have been atremendouspush to have got that far clear). Although, this appears to work in a variety of locations, as per the teaser where ministry man Roger (John Bown) is gunned down in a wood. Dr Seligman (Anthony Dutton, 5.18: Return of the Cybernauts) is also later lured to the woods and dispatched.

Steed: I’m innocent! Entirely innocent!
Mother: Yes, but for how long?

This one’s a Tara single-hander, with Steed under house arrest because secrets are leaking from an institute he is investigating (really because Macnee was taking a holiday). As a consequence, he’s required to hang out with Mother and some bathing-suited belles (including the first appearance of Rhonda, in production terms, which is why she gives Steed an unaccustomed smile). Accordingly, it’s one of Tara’s best showings, since she doesn’t get knocked out or require saving by Steed; he arrives a bit too late to save the day (“Never mind, it’s the thought that counts”). As well as proving handy in the various fights (including the shocking ginger of bowler-hatted pro-wrestler Bruno Elrington), she also looks very becoming in her beret ensemble.

Colonel Withers: Spartan! Amazonian!
Tara: Beg your pardon?
Colonel Withers: Not even out of breath. I like that. Physical fitness. I like that too.

While All Done with Mirrors is big on mystery and set pieces, it’s ultimately a little dry for my tastes, despite a fight during which a villain falls down the lighthouse stairs – all 365 of them. Michael Trubshawe (4.4: Dial a Deadly Number) makes an impression as (the fake) Colonel Withers, impressed that Tara isn’t even out of breath after climbing said stairs and unresponsive to her querying if he’s seen anything, since he has no reason to look at the land ("And what do you see? The sea. That's what you see. The great, grand rolling ocean").

There’s some lovely location filming (done in April), though, and appealingly creative visual touches, such as astronomer Guthrie (Desmond Jordan) losing his glasses on the cliff edge. The supporting cast are solid, but most of the characters fail to come alive. Tara’s given a nominal sidekick in the stuffy Watney (Dinsdale Landen, The Curse of Fenric, suggesting he was never very suave, even in his early 30s).

Barlow (Edwin Richfield in his final appearance in the show, previously showing up in 1.6: Girl on a Trapeze, 2.9: The Removal Men, 3.17: The White Elephant, 4.6: Too Many Christmas Trees, and 5.19: Dead Man’s Treasure) is the ring leader, an impostor stealing secrets from the research institute. Also present are head of security Major Sparshott (Peter Copley, 2.21: The White Dwarf), Pandora (Joanna Vogel, 5.9: The Correct Way to Kill), who notes something is iffy as she’d made arrangements with the real colonel, and is forced to lure Tara to her death, and Carswell (Tennial Evans, 1.11: Please Don’t Feed the Animals, 2.14: The Big Thinker, 3.4: The Golden Fleece).

Steed: I always say the simplest pleasures in life are the most enjoyable.

The coda has Steed serving Tara dinner in a field of buttercups – very idyllic and summery looking – including a fillet steak he’s been cooking in the Rolls’ engine. A solid episode, and I can see why it’s generally acclaimed as one of the best Tara King episodes, but for me it lacks that necessary extra flavour.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

The guy practically lives in a Clue board.

Knives Out (2019)
(SPOILERS) “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she’d have a character who’s an Internet troll.” There’s a slew of ifs and buts in that assertion, but it tells you a lot about where Rian Johnson is coming from with Knives Out. As in, Christie might – I mean, who can really say? – but it’s fair to suggest she wouldn’t be angling her material the way Johnson does, who for all his pronouncement that “This isn’t a message movie” is very clearly making one. He probably warrants a hesitant pass on that statement, though, to the extent that Knives Out’s commentary doesn’t ultimately overpower the whodunnit side of the plot. On the other hand, when Daniel Craig’s eccentrically accented sleuth Benoit Blanc is asked “You’re not much of a detective, are you?” the only fair response is vigorous agreement.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

It's their place, Mac. They have a right to make of it what they can. Besides, you can't eat scenery!

Local Hero (1983)
(SPOILERS) With the space of thirty-five years, Bill Forsyth’s gentle eco-parable feels more seductive than ever. Whimsical is a word often applied to Local Hero, but one shouldn’t mistake that description for its being soft in the head, excessively sentimental or nostalgic. Tonally, in terms of painting a Scottish idyll where the locals are no slouches in the face of more cultured foreigners, the film hearkens to both Powell and Pressburger (I Know Where I’m Going!) and Ealing (Whisky Galore!), but it is very much its own beast.

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993)
(SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Of course, one m…

You're a dead tissue that won't decompose.

Collateral Beauty (2016)
(SPOILERS) Will Smith’s most recent attempt to take a wrecking ball to his superstardom, Collateral Beauty is one of those high concept emotional journeys that only look like a bad idea all along when they flop (see Regarding Henry). Except that, with a plot as gnarly as this, it’s difficult to see quite how it would ever not have rubbed audiences up the wrong way. A different director might have helped, someone less thuddingly literal than David Frankel. When this kind of misguided picture gets the resounding drubbing it has, I tend to seek out positives. Sometimes, that can be quite easy – A Winter’s Tale, for example, for all its writ-large flaws – but it’s a fool’s errand with Collateral Beauty.

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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