By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (8 October 2018)
The genre of
the action political thriller may not be everybody’s ‘cup of tea’. But if you
have even a slight taste for spy tales, then there are several series that have
come out recently that I’d recommend.
There’s ‘Berlin
Station’, ‘Jack Ryan’ and ‘Condor’ all of which are gripping political
thrillers filled with suspense and intrigue.
The latest one
to come out is ‘Condon’. But I also like Tom Clancy’s ‘Jack Ryan’ and the two
series have much in common. In fact, both are about an Analyst working at the
CIA. Both Jack Ryan (John Krasinski) and Joseph Turner (Max Irons) in Condor
are comfortable working at desk jobs, analyzing numbers and looking for
patterns that might indicate some sinister sort of ‘enemy activity.’
In the case
of both Clancy and Condor’s original novelist, James Grady who wrote ‘Six Days
of the Condor’ (which was the basis for the 1975 film ‘Three Days of the Condor’),
the original enemies were the Communists. But in 2018, the enemies are more
mysterious, less easily identified which is why analysts like Jack and Joe play
such pivotal roles.
Both
characters operate out of clandestine offices in Washington, DC. Both identify anomalous
patterns that raise red flags. And both had ‘followed the money’ to some
mysterious point that is bound to lead to the ‘yet to be identified’ enemy that
the series is going to expose.
In Jack’s
case, he sees the implications of his discovery before his bosses do. So he has
to struggle to get them to take him seriously.
Some film critics found Jack’s impassioned pushiness preposterous. But I
think they didn’t have the patience to find out the underlying motive for why
Jack feels so strongly about stopping foreign terrorists. By the time his
superiors listen to him, hundreds of people have already died from breathing
chemical toxins.
Jack figures
out who the terrorists are but doesn’t know where they plan to target next or
why? The series is seriously suspenseful as Jack’s identity as well as his
motives come out gradually, adding increasing tension as the series unfolds.
This Jack
isn’t a ‘Jack Bauer’ of the inimitable ‘24’ series with Kiefer Sutherland. But
John Krasinski’s Jack is equally hard core and surprisingly fit to battle an
enemy he follows through Europe and the Middle East.
One good
thing about this series is that while the ‘terrorists’ are Middle Eastern, they
are not simply cardboard stereotypical bad guys. Instead, their leader Mousa Bin Suleiman (Ali
Suliman) is a father who loves his family but terrifies his wife (Dina Shihabi)
once she realizes he is up to no good. She flees with two of their three kids
and her journey becomes part of Jack’s race to find her husband before he manages
to use his chemical weapon to destroy even larger urban populations.
Jack has a
reason for what seems like an obsession, but in typically American ‘Rambo’ style,
he’s ‘the one guy’ capable of saving the world.
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