The Deserters - "Act of Treason"

[indy42]

"There is no morality in war."

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Starring

Titus Welliver as SSG John Mason

Lee Thompson Young as Sgt. Jesse Baker

Nazneen Contractor as Combat Medic Sonali Rane

Guy Pearce as Sgt. Peter Cole

Daryl Sabara as Pvt. Nick Cohen

Michael Massee as Nathanial Clayborne

Peter Capaldi as Special Supervisor Trevor Sharpe

Irrfan Khan as Mehdi Prakasa

Jeremy Irons as Alexandre Valo

[Dale]

1x01 - "Act of Treason"

So, I didn’t know much about this, except Indy’s recent mentioning’s of the title. So I was interested to get to it. And in the early going, I felt that it set and created a nice tone to the whole proceedings. I do think some of the dialogue; especially Clayborne’s opening speech was a tad heavy handed (the “whatever you say in your religion” line in particular) but he is a General, so perhaps his speeches should be rather on the nose.

The introduction with Valo set up an interesting story between him and Prakasa. The meeting that proceeded it with Clayborne and Sharpe worked extremely well in introducing us to this character and adding a certain amount of mystery to him. But the voice over action stuff might get old quickly if you over use it.

The desertion itself was a good piece of action. But the dialogue just gets extremely bland and generic “god damnit’s”, “no’s”, “don’ts”. I know it’s hard to write dialogue in the midst of an action scene, without it sounding like a stock response; which is usually why I don’t bother unless it’s going to contain a plot point. I know it’s nitpicking, but honestly I’d rather take silence than a “Christ, god damnit, no”. I also felt like they started shooting at each other to soon. We don’t know their motives for escape yet, maybe it was enough to start shooting at their own guys. Who knows? And I liked the effort Mason went to, to prevent Cole from shooting at them and the reaction after he did. But I don’t know, maybe it’ll play better when we know more about the history. But as it is, it was just kind of flat.

Sharpe and Clayborne’s interaction following the escape is kind of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I liked the deepening of the mystery. It raises some questions, like how the hell did the deserters escape? Why would a truck in the middle of a desert with one river running through it need scuba gear? But I have a better question; how in the blue hell would Sharpe know the truck had scuba gear? Did he check the truck before the escape, did he ask the people who loaded the scuba gear on the truck. And if so, did those people wonder why they’d need scuba gear? Because at some point, between this scuba gear getting on that truck, and Sharpe finding out about said scuba gear you’d have thought someone would have thought of asking these questions before the daring escape attempt? And if it was one of the deserters that put the scuba gear on the truck, you’d have to imagine they’d only pack enough for them to use, as to not draw attention to themselves. And if that were the case, then surely they wouldn’t leave any behind, to keep the means of their escape a secret and leave less clues for Clayborne to follow. Now either someone’s doing their job very badly, or the deserters are idiots.

And again, in said scene with Sharpe and Clayborne I felt the dialogue was very to the point, direct and on the nose. Now as I said earlier, Clayborne is a General and seems like the direct, to the point sort of fellow. But this scene literally felt like question, answer, question, answer with no real. It was like checking off bullet points with no real time for character development and exploration. I did appreciate the piece about Clayborne never needing a Ceremonial pistol before but it was all to brief and was again, really, really direct. I felt like the introspective moment that could have developed the Clayborne character from the tough, “god damnit”, direct general to a deeper character, was cut short to get to some rather boring exposition. Which is all Sharpe has been so far, someone who pops up to spout exposition in a rather bland fashion.

Also, I really hate to nitpick (again) but if Baker was swimming around, with an open bullet wound in dirty, murky water (and then presumably a sewer if they’re pulling themselves up through manhole covers), shouldn’t his wound be rather infected? And they’re going to treat it with a medical kit? And I’m assuming they’re a fair distance from the base, seeing as there’s manhole covers and alleyways here, and not the middle of the desert. So it must have taken them a couple hours, an hour at least, to get here. Shouldn’t he be in far worse condition than he is? At the very least, shouldn’t the rest of them be less concerned about getting the bullet out and more concerned about the wound being infected?

The scene between Clayborne and Prakasa was the best of the episode in my opinion. I felt like you got the pseudo-political and military talk right. There was a subtlety to what Praksa was saying which wasn’t present in any of Clayborne’s other interactions, or with the deserters for that matter. And given the earlier scenes, involving Praksa and Valo and the discussions between Clayborne and Sharpe regarding Valo, an underlying tension was there throughout which I appreciated.

Overall, I think Indy’s put together something in “The Deserters” that plays like “Point” in military garb. There’s a good amount of mystery to the show already. There’s some storylines that intrigue me. But the characters need a lot of work, because right now they all seem so generic and bland. The whole thing just felt a little disjointed, with a few key aspects missing. The Valo plot was hinted at, there were discussions held regarding him. But we have no idea what these people are talking about, we don’t really know who he is. And yes, there is a mystery to it but at the same time why should we care about the mystery when we don’t know the basic facts of the matter? It’s like taking advanced level maths without even knowing how to add or subtract. It just all goes over your head and you don’t get anything out of it in the end. The deserters escape was fine, but after the truck crashes into the river, I stopped caring. The carefully planned escape it seemed to be at the start all goes to hell because of a massive flaw in logic (or lack of understanding, I’m sure you can explain Indy and I’ll gladly admit to being an idiot and or too tired to really follow what the hell’s going on) with the scuba gear.

I didn’t connect with a single character at all, because I felt for the most part the dialogue was fairly flat. In fact the only person who I felt had a distinct voice in the whole episode was Praksa, which made me more inclined to root for him despite the fact he’s really the antagonist of the thing. At least I think he is, I’m not entirely sure. The deserters killed a solider representing his country, which makes me less inclined to root for them, despite the fact they were for the most part presented as the protagonists. Clayborne is a general who’s trying to take down Valo who we’ve been lead to believe is a shady individual, but at the same time Sharpe stated he mistreats the soldiers and runs his base like a prison camp. There’s moral ambiguity and blurring the lines to create deep, complex individuals and then there’s just not having a clear focus which is what I felt like this was. The only character with any redeeming qualities was Mason (who was the defacto leader of this desertion which when you really think about it, isn’t redeeming at all) and to be quite honest, he was the most boring character of all.

The action was well written, in fact really the whole thing was. Indy, you’ve developed into a good writer over the years, far better than the one I first read almost three years ago now. I do think you have a way to go with dialogue though. Sometimes it’s great (The Praksa/Clayborne scene towards the end) but at other times it feels like you’re going through the motions, just getting the information you need to get across, without making it entertaining or using it to create a depth to the character. Which is something I’m more than guilty of myself; but this is my review and I’ll criticize you for it if I want to. Don’t judge me.

Overall: 6.5/10