The producers of the new AMC series “Rubicon” — debuting Sunday night — caught my attention when they announced that they were hoping for a contemporary equivalent of the Watergate era paranoid thrillers “Three Days of the Condor,” “The Parallax View,” “The Conversation” and “All the President’s Men.”
Those happen to be four of my favorite 1970s movies, so when AMC sent me a DVD screener of the first few episodes I was eager to watch.
This post-9/11 era we are living in is certainly reminiscent of the political climate of 35 years ago — we are bogged down in two military actions not unlike Vietnam, there is a nagging fear of terrorism added to such everyday activities as stepping onto a Metro North train or going to any large gathering in New York City, and more than ever, the country seems to be in the control of international corporations rather than elected officials.
Last night I watched two of the four episodes on the AMC screener and my hopes for a sophisticated contemporary political thriller sagged after only a few minutes. Two hours later, I pushed the stop button on the DVD player, and it seems unlikely that I will ever go back to “Rubicon.”
The show does a good job of capturing the look of the 1970s classics — specifically Gordon Willis’s memorably unsettling camerawork on “Parallax” and “President’s Men” — but the story moves at a glacial pace and after two episodes I didn’t really care where “Rubicon” might be heading in episodes three and four.
The producers looked to the 1970s movies but failed to see how tightly plotted they were — the atmosphere of paranoia and dread in those classics was woven through steadily building suspense and the development of characters we cared about.
I doubt that the vise-like grip of “Parallax,” in particular, could be sustained for much more than the two hour running time of the Alan Pakula drama about a vast assassination conspiracy. It wasn’t a story suitable for commercial interruptions and week-long breaks in between the storytelling.
“Rubicon” is set in the downtown Manhattan offices of a vaguely defined government intelligence operation staffed by academics and nerdy young professionals — much like the New York subsidiary of the CIA set up in an East Side townhouse in “Three Days of the Condor.”
James Badge Dale is the protagonist Will Travers who starts to think his boss’s death in a commuter train crash was no accident. In the first two hours, we learn that his icy superior (Arliss Howard, trying too hard to be sinister) might have been behind the train crash and that another of Will’s co-workers (a woman who seems to have a romantic interest in Will) is the Howard character’s office spy.
The show gets off on the wrong foot in the first few minutes when we find out why Will walks around in such a funk (even before he starts seeing a conspiracy in his own office).
Will was meeting his wife and young daughter atop the World Trade Center on 9/11, we are told, but he was a few minutes late, and lost both of them in the terrorist attack.
It’s a jarring and rather vulgar plot point to those of us who are familiar with the WTC and the events of that terrible day — the observation deck at the top of the South Tower didn’t open until 9:30 in the morning, so there were no people there when the first plane hit just before 9.
And it seems highly unlikely that Will and his wife and child would have been part of the business breakfast meeting scene in the Windows on the World restaurant on the North Tower.
Yes, there is such a thing as dramatic license, but using 9/11 in this manner bothered me in ways I cannot quite explain.
The New York locations and the terrific camerawork give “Rubicon” lots of atmosphere, but I never got the feeling that the people pulling the strings were guiding me into a well-crafted thriller with a satisfying climax. They show good taste in their source material, but gave me little confidence in their storytelling skills.
