I commenced to write this on a train journey south Saturday 5th March 2011 having watched the night before a most controversial and challenging film, where I agree with one reviewer that much of the depiction of violence was gratuitous but that the issue of means and ends was an important one to be raised.
The USA and British Governments treat the use of torture against civilians as a crime against humanity or as a crime in itself when used against the servants of another state and ideology, or against those believed to have committed criminal acts. It has been proven that the information obtained through the use of torture is frequently unreliable and that once the torture has been established it is unlikely that a court will accept the evidence obtained so the culprit will walk free however culpable they are of the particular offence. This aspect was covered in the first episode of the Blue Bloods, now showing on Sky Atlantic.
In Unthinkable, with Samuel L Jackson, the What If issue involves a Terrorist who before arranging to be captured on mainland USA had sent a video in which he shows the immediate location of three nuclear bombs set to explode in three different cities if his demands are not met within a matter of days. He has not made any demands prior to capture and the film is based on the premise that the government will not meet the demands or negotiate on them, regardless that it is established the bombs exist and collectively will kill and maim around 20 million men, women and children. The terrorist has also been trained with withstand the excess and prolonged application of pain.
The USA Presidential government(through Homeland Security) retains the services of Samuel L Jackson, a married man with two children for just such a situation who lives under 24 hour security surveillance but otherwise he and his family are able to lead a normal life. Although the CIA manage the holding of the prisoner they use the army to provide the secret environment and who themselves initially use some basic torture methods such as water boarding and asphyxiation before Jackson is involved.
For some unexplained reason the army commanders selected for the task appear unaware of what their work is likely to lead to and that it will reach points beyond which they are unwilling to go. This aspect makes does not make sense.
Nor does the involvement of the FBI who are brought in by the government in the interrogation and attempted finding of the locations and rendering harmless of the devices. This may be because of the statutory jurisdiction and inter state arrangements where the Federal FBI and CIA units as well as the army have defined and limited official roles but I was immediately struck by the inconsistency that if as a government you decide to break your own laws in the interests of the greater good why should worry about the niceties of national, state and agency responsibilities, risk dissent on the part of those given the responsibility to break the terrorist or indeed keep him the USA if torturing him on the mainland created a problem. Have they not heard of rendition to countries whose basic standards are different?
It is also not clear why he allowed himself to be caught and why he did not just explode the devices at the earliest opportunity, or how he was able to bring in the nuclear material from Russia where it originated and obtain all the relevant parts without the help of others, or why he did not ensure that his wife and children had left the USA prior to giving himself up.
The basic story is therefore fundamentally flawed and it was immediately evident to me that as soon as that the torturing of the man had no effect that the USA government, or any government in such a situation, would use his wife and then his children as hostages. It is after all a simple equation the life of one woman and two children against those of millions. It is not unthinkable but the simple mathematics and a basic moral calculation made by everyone who was involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and presently in Afghanistan where over the past days a group of children were unintentionally caught in the line of fire.
In Unthinkable the audience is subjected to prolonged scenes of violence in which the terrorist is castrated, has the tops of fingers sliced off, his teeth pulled and threatened with his eyes being gouged out as well as electric shocks before his wife is brought in and has her throat slashed and then his children secured and threatened with similar action towards them.
In the beginning it is the FBI lady who is used as the good cop/ bad cop form of interrogation but she too joins in the violence after the terrorist tricks them into detonating a comparatively small device in a shopping mall which kills 53 men women and children and injures hundreds of others. As an alternative to the torturing of the children the terrorist does reveal the location of the three devices, but Jackson like me had worked out that because the nuclear bomb making material that had gone missing in a decommissioning event in Russia had been between 15 and 18 pounds (in reality the amount would have been known precisely) and each of the three located bombs contained precisely three and a half pounds of material, there was a fourth bomb, and the film ends in silence with a view of the clock timer going from countdown to detonation time. The basic point of the film is therefore that there are some situations in which torture is justified but if you are going to do it you have been ensure that those selected to undertake the task are up to it and properly trained, and that there will be consequences for those authorizing the action as well as undertaking the action if the action fails, and possibly even if it is successful and becomes known. Winston Churchill took the decision to allow the bombing of Coventry without taking action to warn the population despite our knowledge of the raid because we needed to continue to ensure that the German enemy was not aware we had broken their use of coded communication to protect the date and location of the main invasion of mainland Europe and other strategic developments, and he again authorised the bombing of civilian Dresden as did the USA President the use of Atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in order to reduce the loss of life among the allies and bringing the war to a quicker end.
In the film Jackson himself is shown as a normal human being sitting with his wife communicating with his children over the lap top she had brought to him in a break from his work! The FBI lady queries how she can live with such man, and first the wife and then Jackson explain that his wife has been raped by three men in front of her parents during the recent ethnic cleansing wars in the Balkans and that she then had the opportunity which she had taken to kill them. When in relation to the two children of the terrorist he hesitates, the Presidential command link advises that they have taken his wife and children into protective custody for such an eventuality. Michael Sheen plays the terrorist. The film was not released into theatre but went straight to DVD on release in June 2010 and subsequently to TV.
A very different approach to the behaviour by military representatives of one power in relation to the civilian population of a conquered people is the subject of A Bell for Adano which involves the American appointed commander of a small Italian seaside town and port at the foot of Italy as the allies commenced their assault and the German machine had turned on its former allies and brotherly fascists. The position of the American officer is no different from that of the German counterpart in the Secret of Santa Vittoria in which the newly appointed German town commander of a previously allied Italian town is at heart an honourable, responsible and cultured man ordered by his superiors to undertake an assignment. In the Secret of Santa Vittoria the assignment is to secure and remove the town’s stock of wine for the Cinzano company while in the Bell for Adano, the order is given that the town has to use side roads and not the main road which has to be kept free for the transport of men and supplies to the front line.
Gene Tierney stars in this 1945 released film based on the book by John Hersey. The town presently comprises the women folk with the men held by the German army until released by the advancing allies and a few old men including the former fascist Mayor who has gone into hiding in the hills and the police man and other local officials all now anxious to show their pro allies allegiance and helpfulness. Their only ask is for a bell to replace that which hung over the town hall for 700 years and taken at the start of the war to be melted down for ammunitions.
In a for once rational action twist for the USA army, the officer in charge is American born but Italian speaking and of Italian family background. His main concern is to get the town functioning again as a pre fascist and post war democracy and this includes restarting the fishing fleet, getting a replacement bell and disobeying an unworkable general order preventing citizens using their carts or moving live stock along the main road. In this instance the main road uses the only bridge passing in and out of the town and which the local supplier of water brings in the daily need together with the transport of essential food and other basic supplies. Although the town is also a port and used and controlled by the Navy their role does not extend outside the port where they live in a civilised and hospitable way.
When the army Major explains his problem about the fishing fleet the Naval officer is willing to set aside the current order and fix it and the local fishing fleet leader is amazed when the Army officer does not require his cut of the catch as had been the situation under the fascists. It is also the Naval officer who arranges for a bell to be found, delivered and re hung for the town. The army officer has also endeared himself to the townswomen after he insists that the policeman joins the rest of the queue for bread as everyone else and does not got to the head of the line because of his official position.
The problem is that the army commander up the line refuses to listen to reasons why the order about the main road cannot be obeyed and who laughs at the notion that they go looking for a spare bell in the middle fo a war. The senior Military police officer, in not quite the same role as the Nazi Gestapo in Santa Vittoria, insists that a communication is sent up the line noting that the officer is not applying the order and ignoring the advice of the Military police that he should obey. The Major’s staff man sees to it that this communication is stuck at the bottom of the paper work tray until one day the Military Policeman sees the unattended pile of paper and deals with it, including the report about the disobedience.
Meanwhile in addition to securing the Bell, the release of the fishing fleet, abolishing corruption and rejecting the offer of the comforts offered by local women(he is married with a family) he finds out the whereabouts of the men folk and arranges for their release home. One of his admirers who initiated this action learns that her husband/ boyfriend did not survive an act of anti fascist heroism. To show their appreciation the townsfolk have arranged for a portrait of the Major to be hung in the space left in the main hall and his office where previously hung one of Mussolini. He attends the fiesta where he is guest of honour keeping from them the news that he has been releaved of his position because of the disobedience and he departs the following morning on his own. This contrasts with the departure of the German commander and his men in the Saint Vittoria when the whole town turns out to see them off before commencing their fiesta to celebrate the saving of their wine store.
The film is based on the real life experience of Frank Toscani who was appointed the military governor of the Sicilian town of Licato after the successful allied invasion. It is enjoyable in contrast to the Unthinkable.
Just as enjoyable was the third episode of Treme, the series about the attempted recovering of the community of Treme in New Orleans after the collapse of the flood defences during cyclone Katrina.
As before there are several entwining ongoing stories of equal importance. While the civil rights lawyer wife of the English novel writing Professor continues her search for the whereabouts of younger brother of the bar owner and her battle with the local police who are not interested because they are getting a premium from FEMA for every prisoner they hold in custody, her main interest in this episode is the position of trombonist Antione Batiste and Davis McAlary when they are both taken into custody.
For some reason the police have decided to purge on street musicians and when Batiste accidentally knocks a police car with his trombone he is badly beaten up, taken into custody and his trombone removed. He is more concerned about the whereabouts of his means of livelihood, his trombone than the beating and temporary incarceration.
The trombonist needs his livelihood for he has a wife and child who appears to rarely see or his son by his ex-wife and he is also having a relationship with a girl from a club where he plays. He had been jamming with a couple of street musicians before his arrest.
The male keyboard player of the couple gets an advance from the previous day’s takings in order to buy a bottle of wine to celebrate the birthday of his partner who is a jazz violinist. She suggests it is saved until after she complete a paid gig at a posh restaurant bar playing with a professional pianist who is impressed with her street busking. While the boyfriend is invited to sit in the restaurant and watch he becomes jealous and bored and goes back to their room and drinks the wine.
The English Professor’s wife has also arranged for the bail of Davis McAlary for mouthing off to a national guard and he insists on doing something in return, which is to give piano lessons to her daughter when she is home from attending boarding school at Baton Rouge which she hates and where her father has found a video from her on the new Internet site of You Tube. He is sceptical about the influence of Davis on their daughter, Sofia, and sits in watching and then stamps on Davis when is seen to be encouraging the girl to develop her immediately obvious talents as a jazz musician and forget all that classical stuff.
Davis then receives a large cheque part of which he uses to take out the restaurant bar owning girl friend who is struggling to keep her place going unlike the restaurant where she is taken. Davis also has words with the male Gay couple neighbours who he believes have been complaining at the noise of coming from flat and who he also dislikes because fo the changes they have made to their accommodation which he wants to see kept in its former traditional style.
The other ongoing character is Albert Big Chief Lambreaux who heads the Mardi Gras and is trying to get his band together. He finds one the members decomposing underneath a boat in the man’s garage and he and other Mardi Gras players provide a proper musical send off only to be horrified when a coach party to see what has happened arrives and the driver enquires what they are up to. He catches a young boy having sex with a girl in the bar which he using as his base after his house cannot be lived in. He then finds that the boy is the nephew of a neighbour who asks the respected Albert if he will find the young man some work while he is out of school! As before there is also some great music in between the story telling.
The surprise of the week was the last episode of Mad Dogs although the way the four part one hour including advertising breaks ended a second series is proposed. The surprise is that after two episodes of farcical behaviour in which it was difficult to see where the project was heading, this episode was full of good drama showing off the acting skills of the four former close friends of the now deceased villa owner who has said he bequeathed the villa to the men which at the time seemed an odd thing to say, until his assassination shortly after.
In the episode the four believe they are under imminent attack after seeing flares set off, the red spotting of a sniper rifle and find the power to the villa been turned off. At first they start to fight amongst themselves bringing out all the home truths and grievances they felt about each other over recent years. The following morning they decide enough is enough out on war paint and go out to tackle the man with a rifle they see by their gate. However when they get there they find that the man is local going out for game.
The one night stand girl arrives with the money she has collected from the hire car for the fee, and amazingly she has not looked inside the bag they used to hold the millions. She goes off after making the delivery and getting the agreed payment. When the return they find the police woman with a gun demanding the drugs and or the money and they quickly realise there is no Serbian mafia but just corrupt and murderous police officers. They offer her villa and the money if she will let them go. Quinn played by the excellent Philip Glenister has a shoot out with Maria Botto as Maria who he kills and she falls into the pool along with the missing foot which she has brought with her, while he is wounded with a bullet through his upper arm.
He has been researching all the footage they have taken with their digital cameras which he replays on the machine which was removed from yacht and it is he who works out that it is the police officer Alvo and Maria who have been their opponents. The three others set off for home each with 20000 euros from the haul. He says he will remain at the villa with the rest of the money as he has nothing to return to the UK for and he then jumps into the pool. Meanwhile Alvo approaches the villa through the gateway armed with a gun. Reading the Wikipedia notes on the series I see that the writer of what is described as a Black Comedy Thriller is influenced by the work of the Coen brothers which explains aspects of the previous episodes although while the Coen’s way work for a continuous film movie I am not sure that it does in episodic form at weekly intervals.
I will write separately about seeing Carmen in 3D, the end of the three part remaking of South Riding, commencing to read and reflect on the subject of bullying where I have been given an academic volume on definitions and methodology as well as findings and management strategies covering most aspects of the subject for the rest of my birthday week, international women‘s day week together with my understanding of the what has been presented as an SAS/Government fiasco of an intervention in Libya.
The USA and British Governments treat the use of torture against civilians as a crime against humanity or as a crime in itself when used against the servants of another state and ideology, or against those believed to have committed criminal acts. It has been proven that the information obtained through the use of torture is frequently unreliable and that once the torture has been established it is unlikely that a court will accept the evidence obtained so the culprit will walk free however culpable they are of the particular offence. This aspect was covered in the first episode of the Blue Bloods, now showing on Sky Atlantic.
In Unthinkable, with Samuel L Jackson, the What If issue involves a Terrorist who before arranging to be captured on mainland USA had sent a video in which he shows the immediate location of three nuclear bombs set to explode in three different cities if his demands are not met within a matter of days. He has not made any demands prior to capture and the film is based on the premise that the government will not meet the demands or negotiate on them, regardless that it is established the bombs exist and collectively will kill and maim around 20 million men, women and children. The terrorist has also been trained with withstand the excess and prolonged application of pain.
The USA Presidential government(through Homeland Security) retains the services of Samuel L Jackson, a married man with two children for just such a situation who lives under 24 hour security surveillance but otherwise he and his family are able to lead a normal life. Although the CIA manage the holding of the prisoner they use the army to provide the secret environment and who themselves initially use some basic torture methods such as water boarding and asphyxiation before Jackson is involved.
For some unexplained reason the army commanders selected for the task appear unaware of what their work is likely to lead to and that it will reach points beyond which they are unwilling to go. This aspect makes does not make sense.
Nor does the involvement of the FBI who are brought in by the government in the interrogation and attempted finding of the locations and rendering harmless of the devices. This may be because of the statutory jurisdiction and inter state arrangements where the Federal FBI and CIA units as well as the army have defined and limited official roles but I was immediately struck by the inconsistency that if as a government you decide to break your own laws in the interests of the greater good why should worry about the niceties of national, state and agency responsibilities, risk dissent on the part of those given the responsibility to break the terrorist or indeed keep him the USA if torturing him on the mainland created a problem. Have they not heard of rendition to countries whose basic standards are different?
It is also not clear why he allowed himself to be caught and why he did not just explode the devices at the earliest opportunity, or how he was able to bring in the nuclear material from Russia where it originated and obtain all the relevant parts without the help of others, or why he did not ensure that his wife and children had left the USA prior to giving himself up.
The basic story is therefore fundamentally flawed and it was immediately evident to me that as soon as that the torturing of the man had no effect that the USA government, or any government in such a situation, would use his wife and then his children as hostages. It is after all a simple equation the life of one woman and two children against those of millions. It is not unthinkable but the simple mathematics and a basic moral calculation made by everyone who was involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and presently in Afghanistan where over the past days a group of children were unintentionally caught in the line of fire.
In Unthinkable the audience is subjected to prolonged scenes of violence in which the terrorist is castrated, has the tops of fingers sliced off, his teeth pulled and threatened with his eyes being gouged out as well as electric shocks before his wife is brought in and has her throat slashed and then his children secured and threatened with similar action towards them.
In the beginning it is the FBI lady who is used as the good cop/ bad cop form of interrogation but she too joins in the violence after the terrorist tricks them into detonating a comparatively small device in a shopping mall which kills 53 men women and children and injures hundreds of others. As an alternative to the torturing of the children the terrorist does reveal the location of the three devices, but Jackson like me had worked out that because the nuclear bomb making material that had gone missing in a decommissioning event in Russia had been between 15 and 18 pounds (in reality the amount would have been known precisely) and each of the three located bombs contained precisely three and a half pounds of material, there was a fourth bomb, and the film ends in silence with a view of the clock timer going from countdown to detonation time. The basic point of the film is therefore that there are some situations in which torture is justified but if you are going to do it you have been ensure that those selected to undertake the task are up to it and properly trained, and that there will be consequences for those authorizing the action as well as undertaking the action if the action fails, and possibly even if it is successful and becomes known. Winston Churchill took the decision to allow the bombing of Coventry without taking action to warn the population despite our knowledge of the raid because we needed to continue to ensure that the German enemy was not aware we had broken their use of coded communication to protect the date and location of the main invasion of mainland Europe and other strategic developments, and he again authorised the bombing of civilian Dresden as did the USA President the use of Atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in order to reduce the loss of life among the allies and bringing the war to a quicker end.
In the film Jackson himself is shown as a normal human being sitting with his wife communicating with his children over the lap top she had brought to him in a break from his work! The FBI lady queries how she can live with such man, and first the wife and then Jackson explain that his wife has been raped by three men in front of her parents during the recent ethnic cleansing wars in the Balkans and that she then had the opportunity which she had taken to kill them. When in relation to the two children of the terrorist he hesitates, the Presidential command link advises that they have taken his wife and children into protective custody for such an eventuality. Michael Sheen plays the terrorist. The film was not released into theatre but went straight to DVD on release in June 2010 and subsequently to TV.
A very different approach to the behaviour by military representatives of one power in relation to the civilian population of a conquered people is the subject of A Bell for Adano which involves the American appointed commander of a small Italian seaside town and port at the foot of Italy as the allies commenced their assault and the German machine had turned on its former allies and brotherly fascists. The position of the American officer is no different from that of the German counterpart in the Secret of Santa Vittoria in which the newly appointed German town commander of a previously allied Italian town is at heart an honourable, responsible and cultured man ordered by his superiors to undertake an assignment. In the Secret of Santa Vittoria the assignment is to secure and remove the town’s stock of wine for the Cinzano company while in the Bell for Adano, the order is given that the town has to use side roads and not the main road which has to be kept free for the transport of men and supplies to the front line.
Gene Tierney stars in this 1945 released film based on the book by John Hersey. The town presently comprises the women folk with the men held by the German army until released by the advancing allies and a few old men including the former fascist Mayor who has gone into hiding in the hills and the police man and other local officials all now anxious to show their pro allies allegiance and helpfulness. Their only ask is for a bell to replace that which hung over the town hall for 700 years and taken at the start of the war to be melted down for ammunitions.
In a for once rational action twist for the USA army, the officer in charge is American born but Italian speaking and of Italian family background. His main concern is to get the town functioning again as a pre fascist and post war democracy and this includes restarting the fishing fleet, getting a replacement bell and disobeying an unworkable general order preventing citizens using their carts or moving live stock along the main road. In this instance the main road uses the only bridge passing in and out of the town and which the local supplier of water brings in the daily need together with the transport of essential food and other basic supplies. Although the town is also a port and used and controlled by the Navy their role does not extend outside the port where they live in a civilised and hospitable way.
When the army Major explains his problem about the fishing fleet the Naval officer is willing to set aside the current order and fix it and the local fishing fleet leader is amazed when the Army officer does not require his cut of the catch as had been the situation under the fascists. It is also the Naval officer who arranges for a bell to be found, delivered and re hung for the town. The army officer has also endeared himself to the townswomen after he insists that the policeman joins the rest of the queue for bread as everyone else and does not got to the head of the line because of his official position.
The problem is that the army commander up the line refuses to listen to reasons why the order about the main road cannot be obeyed and who laughs at the notion that they go looking for a spare bell in the middle fo a war. The senior Military police officer, in not quite the same role as the Nazi Gestapo in Santa Vittoria, insists that a communication is sent up the line noting that the officer is not applying the order and ignoring the advice of the Military police that he should obey. The Major’s staff man sees to it that this communication is stuck at the bottom of the paper work tray until one day the Military Policeman sees the unattended pile of paper and deals with it, including the report about the disobedience.
Meanwhile in addition to securing the Bell, the release of the fishing fleet, abolishing corruption and rejecting the offer of the comforts offered by local women(he is married with a family) he finds out the whereabouts of the men folk and arranges for their release home. One of his admirers who initiated this action learns that her husband/ boyfriend did not survive an act of anti fascist heroism. To show their appreciation the townsfolk have arranged for a portrait of the Major to be hung in the space left in the main hall and his office where previously hung one of Mussolini. He attends the fiesta where he is guest of honour keeping from them the news that he has been releaved of his position because of the disobedience and he departs the following morning on his own. This contrasts with the departure of the German commander and his men in the Saint Vittoria when the whole town turns out to see them off before commencing their fiesta to celebrate the saving of their wine store.
The film is based on the real life experience of Frank Toscani who was appointed the military governor of the Sicilian town of Licato after the successful allied invasion. It is enjoyable in contrast to the Unthinkable.
Just as enjoyable was the third episode of Treme, the series about the attempted recovering of the community of Treme in New Orleans after the collapse of the flood defences during cyclone Katrina.
As before there are several entwining ongoing stories of equal importance. While the civil rights lawyer wife of the English novel writing Professor continues her search for the whereabouts of younger brother of the bar owner and her battle with the local police who are not interested because they are getting a premium from FEMA for every prisoner they hold in custody, her main interest in this episode is the position of trombonist Antione Batiste and Davis McAlary when they are both taken into custody.
For some reason the police have decided to purge on street musicians and when Batiste accidentally knocks a police car with his trombone he is badly beaten up, taken into custody and his trombone removed. He is more concerned about the whereabouts of his means of livelihood, his trombone than the beating and temporary incarceration.
The trombonist needs his livelihood for he has a wife and child who appears to rarely see or his son by his ex-wife and he is also having a relationship with a girl from a club where he plays. He had been jamming with a couple of street musicians before his arrest.
The male keyboard player of the couple gets an advance from the previous day’s takings in order to buy a bottle of wine to celebrate the birthday of his partner who is a jazz violinist. She suggests it is saved until after she complete a paid gig at a posh restaurant bar playing with a professional pianist who is impressed with her street busking. While the boyfriend is invited to sit in the restaurant and watch he becomes jealous and bored and goes back to their room and drinks the wine.
The English Professor’s wife has also arranged for the bail of Davis McAlary for mouthing off to a national guard and he insists on doing something in return, which is to give piano lessons to her daughter when she is home from attending boarding school at Baton Rouge which she hates and where her father has found a video from her on the new Internet site of You Tube. He is sceptical about the influence of Davis on their daughter, Sofia, and sits in watching and then stamps on Davis when is seen to be encouraging the girl to develop her immediately obvious talents as a jazz musician and forget all that classical stuff.
Davis then receives a large cheque part of which he uses to take out the restaurant bar owning girl friend who is struggling to keep her place going unlike the restaurant where she is taken. Davis also has words with the male Gay couple neighbours who he believes have been complaining at the noise of coming from flat and who he also dislikes because fo the changes they have made to their accommodation which he wants to see kept in its former traditional style.
The other ongoing character is Albert Big Chief Lambreaux who heads the Mardi Gras and is trying to get his band together. He finds one the members decomposing underneath a boat in the man’s garage and he and other Mardi Gras players provide a proper musical send off only to be horrified when a coach party to see what has happened arrives and the driver enquires what they are up to. He catches a young boy having sex with a girl in the bar which he using as his base after his house cannot be lived in. He then finds that the boy is the nephew of a neighbour who asks the respected Albert if he will find the young man some work while he is out of school! As before there is also some great music in between the story telling.
The surprise of the week was the last episode of Mad Dogs although the way the four part one hour including advertising breaks ended a second series is proposed. The surprise is that after two episodes of farcical behaviour in which it was difficult to see where the project was heading, this episode was full of good drama showing off the acting skills of the four former close friends of the now deceased villa owner who has said he bequeathed the villa to the men which at the time seemed an odd thing to say, until his assassination shortly after.
In the episode the four believe they are under imminent attack after seeing flares set off, the red spotting of a sniper rifle and find the power to the villa been turned off. At first they start to fight amongst themselves bringing out all the home truths and grievances they felt about each other over recent years. The following morning they decide enough is enough out on war paint and go out to tackle the man with a rifle they see by their gate. However when they get there they find that the man is local going out for game.
The one night stand girl arrives with the money she has collected from the hire car for the fee, and amazingly she has not looked inside the bag they used to hold the millions. She goes off after making the delivery and getting the agreed payment. When the return they find the police woman with a gun demanding the drugs and or the money and they quickly realise there is no Serbian mafia but just corrupt and murderous police officers. They offer her villa and the money if she will let them go. Quinn played by the excellent Philip Glenister has a shoot out with Maria Botto as Maria who he kills and she falls into the pool along with the missing foot which she has brought with her, while he is wounded with a bullet through his upper arm.
He has been researching all the footage they have taken with their digital cameras which he replays on the machine which was removed from yacht and it is he who works out that it is the police officer Alvo and Maria who have been their opponents. The three others set off for home each with 20000 euros from the haul. He says he will remain at the villa with the rest of the money as he has nothing to return to the UK for and he then jumps into the pool. Meanwhile Alvo approaches the villa through the gateway armed with a gun. Reading the Wikipedia notes on the series I see that the writer of what is described as a Black Comedy Thriller is influenced by the work of the Coen brothers which explains aspects of the previous episodes although while the Coen’s way work for a continuous film movie I am not sure that it does in episodic form at weekly intervals.
I will write separately about seeing Carmen in 3D, the end of the three part remaking of South Riding, commencing to read and reflect on the subject of bullying where I have been given an academic volume on definitions and methodology as well as findings and management strategies covering most aspects of the subject for the rest of my birthday week, international women‘s day week together with my understanding of the what has been presented as an SAS/Government fiasco of an intervention in Libya.
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