Stirring up international relations on the heels of a pandemic is the theme of the latest Pike Logan novel, End of Days, following up on 2020’s Hunter Killerand 2021’s American Traitor (discussed here at borg). Writer Brad Taylor is back with the sixteenth novel in his series, which follows special ops agents Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill, a duo that keeps getting drawn into foreign lands for missions involving international espionage. Fans of the series will learn in this entry whether a wedding is in the cards for the lead pair, as they try to thwart a group of militants aiming to bring on a religious war through a string of terrorist acts. As with prior novels in the series, get ready for that 1980s world-at-war vibe, with Pike Logan as a character you’d have once seen played by Steven Seagal.
A year after the release of his book Hunter Killer, Brad Taylor is back with the fifteenth novel in his Pike Logan series, arriving in bookstores today.American Traitor finds the long-time special ops character with his newly adopted daughter trying to create something of a more domestic life. His first step? A vacation in Australia with girlfriend/partner Jennifer Cahill. Pike Logan has been around the world a few times, and so why not meet up with former colleague Clifford “Dunkin” Delmonty on his way to a relaxing dive off the coast? Unfortunately for Pike, this is a political espionage series, which means no easy vacation awaits, and the need to kill off a few people in self defense who try to interrogate him when he arrives at his friend’s apartment. Soon he’s sucked back into a clash between nations.American Traitorarrives in bookstores and here at Amazon today.
The director of The Untouchables, Scarface, Carrie, and Mission: Impossible and writer/director of screenplays for more than a dozen noir thriller films including Body Double, Blow Out, Dressed to Kill, Obsession, and Femme Fatale has penned his first novel. Along with former New York Times editor Susan Lehman, celebrated movie writer/director Brian De Palma delves into a story of intrigue behind a fictional 2016 senatorial campaign in the new political thriller Are Snakes Necessary? arriving in two weeks from Hard Case Crime. The modern pulp noir follows intersecting characters in a smarmy world of cheating, lying, and murder, from Las Vegas to Washington to Paris.
A senator and his majordomo encounter a woman from the senator’s past at an airport, and the senator is eager to welcome her daughter as an intern to document his campaign. Meanwhile, a struggling photographer gets mixed up with the trophy wife of a wealthy businessman in Las Vegas. Two married couples–a cheating wife and a cheating husband–the wife a victim of spousal abuse seeking to get out, and a politician with a sick wife staking out his next conquest. And somehow they all come together during a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, based more toward the underlying novel, which was set in France (I reviewed the novel a few weeks ago here at borg).
In a way Are Snakes Necessary? is De Palma taking a stab at doing his own play on Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski. Fans of The Girl on the Train, Chinatown, State of Play, and the sleazier shelf of 1970s era pulp crime novels will go for this one, along with fans of De Palma’s films. More about 20th century sexual politics than 21st century sexual politics and less about a political campaign, the snakes in the title are the men who continue to get away with manipulation, lies, and sometimes murder.
It’s the kind of movie worth returning to the theater to see. Sean Connery had The Hunt for Red October to represent the long-time James Bond actor showing that even with gray hairs he was as great a leading man as any actor–ever–in a dramatic role. With 2017’s political thriller The Foreigner,Pierce Brosnan, with his own grey beard of the Marko Ramius variety, at last got to prove he, too, had talent well beyond his work as Bond. And audiences have never seen Jackie Chan in a role as he played in The Foreigner, delivering the kind of performance that should have earned him Oscar consideration. It’s been 2.5 years, and at last The Foreignerhas made its way to Netflix for a wider audience to marvel at these actors’ performances and David Marconi’s top-notch script in the vein of Tom Clancy and Ken Follett, based on a novel by Stephen Leather.
The Foreigner features the return to the big screen of the two maturing lead actors: 63-year-old international martial arts action star Jackie Chan in his first major English film role since 2010’s remake of The Karate Kid, and 64-year-old international action star Pierce Brosnan, who, despite several smaller roles hadn’t headlined a major hit since his last stint as Bond in 2002’s Die Another Day. But The Foreigneris more–it’s a triumph–for the actors and for the action genre, providing a showcase of acting talent supported by a solid story that doesn’t miss a step from beginning to end. What was marketed like it would be another entry in the nature of Transporter or Taken, it’s actually a great follow-up to Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger. Timely, riveting, and satisfying on every front, we recommended it here at borg as it arrived in theaters as Oscar-worthy.
Both stars have an entire portfolio of performances they tap into, that they use to foster believability in their characters. Jackie Chan has already shown audiences he has the physicality to portray an ex-special forces soldier with brains and savvy, part MacGyver and part Rambo, although it typically accompanies his trademark smile and a film full of laughs. With his grueling physical feats in film after film, he must be the hardest working actor anywhere. But in The Foreignerwe see Chan convey a full spectrum of emotions as he portrays Mr. Quan, a happy, proud father who is devastated and left to seek out the people behind his daughter’s murder. He’s immensely believable and gives audiences one of the best revenge stories in decades. Think of the days of Chuck Norris fighting back in a decade of “payback” roles–but Chan brings an added level of authenticity and sincerity.
The Foreigner features the return to the big screen of two maturing lead actors: 63-year-old, international martial arts action star Jackie Chan in his first major English film role since 2010’s remake of The Karate Kid, and 64-year-old, international action star Pierce Brosnan, who, despite several smaller roles hasn’t headlined a major hit since his last stint as James Bond in 2002’s Die Another Day. But The Foreigner is more–it’s a triumph–for the actors and for the action genre, providing a showcase of acting talent supported by a solid story that doesn’t miss a step from beginning to end. What looks like it could be another entry in the nature of Transporter or Taken, it’s actually a great follow-up to Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger. If you can get past a title that doesn’t quite fit, you’ll find a fully loaded, political thriller like the novels of Tom Clancy in his heyday–timely, riveting, and satisfying on every front.
Both stars have an entire portfolio of performances they tap into, that they use to foster believability in their characters. Jackie Chan has already shown audiences he has the physicality to portray an ex-special forces soldier with brains and savvy, part MacGyver and part Rambo, although it typically accompanies his trademark smile and a film full of laughs. With his grueling physical feats in film after film, he must be the hardest working actor anywhere. But only now do we see Chan convey a full spectrum of emotions as he portrays Mr. Quan, a happy, proud father who is devastated and left to seek out the people behind his daughter’s murder. He’s immensely believable and gives audiences one of the best revenge stories in decades. Think of the days of Chuck Norris fighting back in a decade of “payback” roles–but with Chan there’s an added level of authenticity. Then there’s Pierce Brosnan, who has that charisma that early on forecasted his destiny to play James Bond. Brosnan has now stepped into the rarity of being an ex-Bond actor but with similar class and style as exhibited by Sean Connery, who successfully forged a second acting phase of his career in films like The Hunt for Red October and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At last Brosnan gets to show off that he, too, has an intense, commanding presence, a force to be reckoned with as a mature actor with gravitas, while maintaining his refined appeal and charm. He also delivers some of the best lines of his career in a convincing, rapid-fire Irish accent as political leader Liam Hennessy. Chan plays a good man pushed too far who must carve out his own brand of vigilante justice, and Brosnan a very real modern villain, but a layered villain who tries to follow a code within a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. By film’s end audiences are left eager to find out what these two performers have for us next.
What appeared to be a standard dramatic trailer for The Foreigner served the film well, holding back why the story is so intriguing. Unlike most trailers these days that give away too much, the trailer for the film provided only a hint at what the story entails, a mainstream drama about domestic terrorism in England and a search by one man to learn the truth when his daughter is killed in an explosion. London has had more than its share of terrorist incidents and the jarring visuals in the film mirror real-life horrors in England, although the twist is that the villainy is from within, as some faction of the Irish Republican Army is returning out of the past, and ex-IRA leadership and the government in England must play a delicate game of practical politics to learn who exactly is responsible. Few recent films have shown a balance of timely real-world atrocities while crafting such an intriguing fictional story. Although not something on the front pages in the U.S., the real-life faction of the IRA began a return to hostilities in 2011, so the story is a bit “ripped from the headlines” and for a U.S. audience a surprising return of those early 1990s themes from Patriot Games.
