CSI: Miami (TV Series) Bolt Action (2009) User Reviews

A Shocking Crime, But Always A Treat To See Cheryl Ladd

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 18 February 2011]

Four beach volleyball players are having a match in front of a bunch of beautiful women when suddenly three of them clutch their chests and fall to the sand, dead. We soon discover they've all been electrocuted. Hmmm, how did this come about? That's what CSI has to figure out: the how, the way and, of course, who did this.

Two of the suspects are mother and daughter. The mother is played by the beautiful Cheryl Ladd, who still looks fantastic at the age of about 60. She plays "Amanda Collins" and it was she who was hosting this "charity party." We also discover she is a "cougar." For the uninformed, a cougar is an older woman who goes after young men.

Whatever, this is another fascinating case with the fantastic CSI: Miami colors which should be viewed from DVDs on to HD TV's to get the full benefit. This program has always been eye candy and it gets more and more so with each passing year.

There are a number of smaller stories in here, too, such as a first-look at perhaps another new CSI employee ("Walter Simmons," play ed by Omar Miller) and the investigation of what went on at the end of last year's show between Calleigh Dusquesne and Eric Delko.

The clincher

[blueavenger · 4/10 · 2 May 2010]

This was actually the show that made me lose all interest in the series. A fanciful, nonsensical plot, wooden acting and none of the staples that make CSI Miami actually watchable sometimes. Don't get me wrong; I like DC As HC, but his is a character in need of a decent television show. The makers of the show assume all viewers are dumb with 3 second memories. They also have little faith that their plot or dialog are interesting enough to capture the audience, so they throw in a million lens flares, out-of focus shots, cameras passing windows and glass cabinets, and by-the-numbers show pacing.

It's a real shame, because my recollection of the early years is that it was a good show and DC actually had some stuff to do, rather than just turn up, phone-in some lines and do the sunglasses thing.

I am sure plenty of people will disagree, but this has turned me off the show for now. I await the return of the original series to Australian TV.

Perhaps the worst photography I've ever seen

[lor_ · 10 August 2010]

I need to echo the negative comments of Barry from Australia -having just watched a rerun of this episode I was shocked at its low quality. I see that producer/director Gina Lamar still works on the show, and more's the pity.

Granted, the "hip" storyline focusing on the phenomenon of women as cougars almost guarantees a shallow, insulting segment. But the writing was so bad, and acting to match, one would think this show had been done out of spite -trying to get back at the network or someone. But no, it turned out to be pretentious swill.

Lamar and her trusty camera crew bombarded the viewer with the lousiest visual onslaught in memory. Half-way through the segment I was racking my brain trying to think of a precedent. I remember R.W. Fassbinder and his soon-to-be-acclaimed d.p. Michael Ballhaus experimenting in the '70s with a pointlessly mobile camera and distracting reflections/foreground objects and the like in the film "Chinese Roulette", a picture I got to like after a couple of theatrical viewings, but which was at odds with the more invisible, brick-by-brick construction of his best films. But that RWF experiment did not prepare me for Lamar & crew.

It's a given that we live in a visually polluted era, nearly 3 decades worth of MTV (and its training ground for hack directors) and even more of the hokey "look" of video games has spoiled a couple of generations for such old-hat photographic notions as composition, perspective and the like. They'd have to watch a European film by Angelopoulos to get that nowadays, or any of the thousands of classic movies (start with nearly anything shot by John Alton or James Wong Howe) that have been forgotten.

So Lamar trots out every trick in the book, NON-STOP. Lens flares (I've always hated them) attack us constantly; every exterior has a carefully coated haze of orange miasma to remind us we're in Michael Mann land; the camera moves from side to side tracking restlessly, or in closeup scenes jitters to and fro, up & down as if the operator were on crack. Transition scenes are a mishmash of overcranking and undercranking, de rigeur for these "modern" TV shows.

For the most retarded (and addicted to the gore/porn/procedural CSI genre) whenever a somebody name-drops some procedure we're treated to an idiotic SPFX sequence burrowing into the human body or remaking Richard Fleischer's FANTASTIC VOYAGE. The modish equivalent of lights & shadows flowing across the walls in an empty room is trotted out constantly so that even a simple conversation involving Caruso or La Rue has their faces frequently masked or blotted out by extraneous light. The backgrounds have all sorts of artificial colored light sources doing a Fourth of July celebration, all to distract us from the clumsy dialog.

I think some Florida university student could do a useful master's thesis on this single episode, dissecting shot by shot, or nearly frame by frame, what's wrong with the over-busy technique. It's virtually a time capsule of what's gone wrong with our entertainment industry -sensationalism replacing story values.

So I'm on my soap box today, angered by this apotheosis of entertainment that I suffered through last night on the telly. Having been addicted to the tube in a big way since the '50s, but a lifelong film buff, I posit a simple proposition. The black & white series of the '50s and '60s are simply superior to crap like this CSI: Miami; they are almost in another universe in terms of quality. The level of writing, directing (check IMDb randomly for director credits on any Drama shows of the period and you will find a who's who of some of the greatest talents of all time, from the famous (Sam Peckinpah and Ida Lupino) to the underrated (Alexander Singer and Richard C. Sarafian). The guest stars are a fabulous set of character actors, maybe not as great as the feature film character players of the '30s and '40s, but brilliant compared to the tired same-o group of "Lost", "Alias", etc. graduates who pop up night after night.

And I haven't even mentioned the oxymoronic "Reality TV" genre, which I blessedly escaped, having been born too soon. What a load of mindless, ephemeral drivel.