Death Train/Detonator

There are bad movies, and there are bad movies one loves. Years and years ago, back in the days of VHS and videoclub, I rented a made for TV B movie. It's title is Detonator, or Death Train in the US. It's an action thriller set on a train hijacked by terrorists lead by a mysterious Russian general turned rogue. Not only did they hijacked the train, but they put an artisanal A bomb on it. And there is a second bomb somewhere else, to complicate things further. This is a sinister but (very) convoluted scheme to restore USSR and it makes very little sense. But there's action on a train going through Europe, with an nuke as a MacGuffin, so what's not to love? And a word on the casting: you have a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan as the lead, Patrick Stewart to give this mess some proper British thespian gravitas, Christopher freaking Lee as the villain (magnificent as always), a pre Lester Freamont Clarke Peters... Seriously, if nothing else, the casting director did his job right. Is it good? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I had a ball rediscovering it recently.

The wisdom of Lester Freamon

I did not blog about The Wire for a long while, not since August 2013. Rewatching it recently, I thought this was long overdue. This time, I have decided to quote veteran cop, natural police and investigator extraordinaire Lester Freamon, masterfully interpreted by Clarke Peters. Not only is he probably the smartest character of the show, at least the smartest on the side of the law, he is also the wisest. He says things that are pure existentialist wisdom. This one, for instance, which you can read on the picture. You can watch the scene on YouTube here (I cannot embed it unfortunately). Something worth following.