Inside Man, on Netflix

Statistics indicate most murders are committed by close friends or family members. Jefferson Grieff agrees and he ought to know. The criminologist brutally murdered and decapitated his wife. However, he is still accepting cases on a special, limited-time-only basis, until his sentence is carried out. Perhaps the Nero-Wolfe-on-death-row can save a woman an ocean away in Steven Moffat’s four-part Inside Man, which premieres today on Netflix.

What does a proper English vicar like Harry Watling have to do with Grieff? They might just become fellow murderers, through an agonizingly torturous chain of events. Being truly charitable, Watling took Edgar, a disturbed young parolee, into his vicarage. Having too much sympathy, he agreed to hold Edgar’s flash drive full of adult material so his domineering mother would not find it. Not really thinking about, he took it home, where his son gave it to his math (or rather “maths” since they are British) tutor, Janice Fife. Disturbingly, the models depicted therein were decidedly not of age.

Fearing for his son’s reputation but mindful of his vows, Watling tries to explain, but the misunderstandings quickly escalate. Panic leads to further misinterpretations and before you know it, Watling has Fife locked in the cellar. So far, only journalist Lydia West suspects Fife might be missing, but they only just met in the prologue, so she can’t credibly report her missing to the police. However, she can ask the advice of her reluctant interview subject, Grieff.

The are two halves to inside man. One half features Grieff who is ruder than Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, but let’s face it, he does not have much left to lose. Since Grieff cannot have metal implements, he uses the photographic memory of fellow convicted murderer Dillon Kempton as his note-taking device. Their Holmes-and-Watson routine is jolly good fun to watch.

The other half is the incredibly manipulative and uncomfortable Job-like plague of troubles that rain down on the Watling family, who Moffat carefully establishes are good, decent folk, simply to make Grieff’s point anybody can become a murderer under the right circumstances. However, the succession of Rube Goldberg-like one-darned-things-after-another that befall the Watley family are wildly contrived, stretching believability past its breaking point. Witnessing their anguish and desperation is no fun whatsoever. Making him a vicar really feels like extra mean-spirited piling on, but admittedly, it adds further moral dimensions to dilemma.

Stanley Tucci chews the scenery marvelously as Grieff and his bantering chemistry with Atkins Estimond, as the brutish but often quite witty Kempton, is thoroughly entertaining. Dylan Baker is also terrific as Warden Casey, who is also rather droll and cleverer than you would expect for government employee.

David Tennant might be too good as Watling, because it is just painful watching him implode. On the other hand, something about both Dolly Wells as Fife and Lyndsey Marshal as Watling’s wife Mary seems off—like they constantly say and do things to raise the stakes, elevate the pressure, and further confuse the situation.

Nightfire (Short Film), Co-Starring Dylan Baker

Ukraine could use a few good action heroes right about now. Unfortunately, these two American super-spies will probably not qualify. However, the aftermath of their latest mission gets so complicated, they might end up doing the right thing anyway in director-co-screenwriter-co-editor Brando Benetton & cinematographer-co-editor Garrett Nicholson’s longish (43-minute) short, Nightfire, which releases today on streaming services.

In the very-near future, the American government has essentially purchased the embattled nation of Ukraine for two billion dollars, so Putin launches a nuclear strike, ending the world and the picture, except apparently not in this alternate universe. Instead, Agents Carter and Ross are dispatched to recover micro-drives holding sensitive information regarding the transaction. In the process, they also rescue Prof. Olivetti, an Italian national held hostage by the terrorists—or so it seems.

After returning to a hero’s welcome, Carter discovered they were being played by shadowy conspirators, which makes him a target, (whereas the more cynical Ross sort of figured as much from the start). Thusly launches an admirably cinematic chase through the streets of Verona.

Nightfire started out as a student film, so its professional sheen, legit distribution, and casting of the highly recognizable Dylan Baker in a supporting role are impressive. The action sequences are also nicely produced, but Benetton & Los Silva’s narrative is really a tangled web of credibility issues and predictable clichés. Maybe we should be grateful the American operatives are not the villains here, but that dubious honor is still reserved for an American senator (who weirdly seems to wield presidential-level power).

Hunters on Prime Video

In 1977, thriller fans were primed to look for fugitive National Socialists under every bed. Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil had been one of the biggest bestsellers of the previous year, following in the footsteps of Robert Ludlum’s Osterman Weekend and Frederick Forsythe’s Odessa File. Plus, in real life, Simon Wiesenthal’s heroic hunt for war criminals was reasonably well-reported. Meyer Offerman has recruited a team to do similar work, but their methods are more hardcore in the first season of Hunters, created by David Weil and executive produced by Jordan Peele, which premieres tomorrow on Prime Video.

Jonah Heidelbaum knew his grandmother Ruth survived a concentration camp, but she never talked about the Holocaust. Yet, he suspects her murder was somehow related to her status as a survivor, based on what he heard while cowering around the corner. Offerman definitely agrees.

Offerman met and fell in love with Heidelbaum’s grandmother while they were both held captive in the camps. Over time, their relationship became rather complicated, but she was still his primary researcher, who compiled the files and testimony that now supports the group’s Nazi-hunting. Naturally, Heidelbaum wants in, but the rest of the Hunters are skeptical, especially the not very merciful Sister Harriet. Martial arts expert Joe Torrance and the Pam Grier-inspired Roxy Jones are nearly as unwelcoming. However, Murray and Mindy Markowitz, an old married couple who happen to be crack weaponsmiths, and Lonnie Flash, a Jewish exploitation movie star (sort of a forerunner to the Hebrew Hammer) are more sympathetic.

Even before her murder, Offerman’s group detected signs of increased activity on behalf of the secretive Odessa-esque organization. Viewers know they have Biff Simpson, a highly placed mole in the State Department, who has convinced Jimmy Carter to lift trade sanctions on Latin America. Apparently, they have big plans that require a mystery import from the southern hemisphere.

Hunters is peppered with many amusing faux-grindhouse visual gags in the Tarantino-Machete tradition, but it still has a very incomplete understanding of the era it is trying to recreate. Sometimes it is small details, like a reference to Kramer vs. Kramer, which was released two years later (in 1979). However, some errors reflect a more fundamental cluelessness regarding the greater social trends of the era. For instance, in one scene, naïve Heidelbaum goes undercover as Young Republican canvasser, hoping to score a signature from a suspected war criminal in Huntville, Alabama. However, a YR would be almost unheard of in the solid democratic South of the 1970s. (Alabama voted squarely for Carter and the Huntsville district elected Dems until 2010.) Even more to the point, the rampant crime and fiscal collapse that defined Abe Beame’s mayoralty in New York are largely, if not entirely ignored.

Nevertheless, given the alarming increase in anti-Semitic violence, here and abroad, it is definitely satisfying to see some old school retribution. The shadowy conspirators and the German fugitives hiding in plain sight totally have it coming—and the Hunters frequently give it to them, in graphically poetic terms.