Reviewing Movies

If you’ve read Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay then viewing Yellowknife, the setting for this CBC TV Series, from the air gives you a bird’s eye view of a landscape so vividly described in the novel. The show draws on the famous daring-do of the Canadian North’s Bush Pilots who fly and land anywhere in any weather in their float planes or on skis in a territory where compasses tend to spin round and round so close to the magnetic pole. For airplane buffs the show is a museum collectors dream with float planes and single-engine Beachcraft. The venerable DC3 is prominently flown.

CBC is at pains to show off its star attraction in this series, Adam Beach as Bobby Martin though until he goes on a diet and spends some time in a gym he should think twice about exposing his flabby midriff. The family run airline at the centre of this show lurches from crisis to crisis as it follows the lives of its pilots, mechanics, and office staff on the ground and in the air. The cast plays an eclectic mix of misfits such as one would expect to show up in the North. Interesting to see Nathaniel Arcand who plays a good guy on Heartland playing a heavy here. For actors bad guys are often more fun.

Just watched the last three episodes last night. Alas there will be no resolution of the cliffhanger rescue that ended Season 3. Not only was the show cancelled without warning but the sets, costumes, and props were sold off in almost ungodly haste. The CBC Radio Drama Department has been cut and original CBC TV Drama is rapidly disappearing. CBC Sports are gone, what’s left?

Can I be forgiven for writing the third time about a 10-part mini-series? It was the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbour that brought the Americans officially into a war that the rest of the world had been waging for over two years and they would not be ready to engage until nearly a year later but yet guess who thinks they won the war? Guess it’s obvious I’m not an American. This is not to denigrate the sacrifices made by those who went into battle and never came home again or did so maimed in body and spirit.

This series is unique in making the war experience personal. The depiction of war is brutal and the enemy fanatical but it is the personal details that bring the horror of war home to us. Eugene Sledge would not be the first doctor’s son whose Father tried to keep him away from a war. Their ongoing relationship begins and ends the series. The startling normalcy of life back home is in stark contrast to the experience of the Marines on those small pieces of coral in the vast Pacific. There the jungle, the insects, the critters, and endemic diseases were every bit as much a danger as the enemy. Wars are won and lost on the stomachs of the men who fight them, an army marches on its stomach and cannot survive long without clean water.

The first landing contrasts arriving to find troops resting on the beach with the suspenseful march through an eerie and unknown jungle environment. Finding the abandoned enemy camp ups the ante then comes the rain.

Several themes seem to be common to all war movies. Inept West Point Educated Lieutenants whose book larnin’ ill equips them for the rigors of battle. Command decisions that squander hundreds and thousands of lives on meaningless objectives. Friendly fire incidents often involving aerial or ship to shore bombardment. Soldiers killed by their comrades because they did something stupid at night. The various manifestations of battle fatigue. The nightmares that last a lifetime after the war.  

Had I been a veteran don’t know as I could have sat through this series.

At base a series about super-human action heroes from a comic book background. For a TV Series the special FX’s were decent given the budget at hand. On the other hand the launch of the airship the double helix uses the same footage every time. The same footage is used every time we approach Genomax and many other sequences give one a feeling of deja vu. The settings in Toronto are not readily identifiable but then most people have never been to the former Downview Airforce Base though they may have walked there for a papal visit. Scarborough Bluffs provide the setting for Sanctuary, the actual space inside is miles to the North-West. Aside from their mutant abilities all but Emma are remarkable martial artists. Their abilities mean that they don’t pack a lot of weapons.

The show ended abruptly because one of its production companies fell apart ending it after 3 seasons. Tom McCamus was temporarily written out of the show to perform at Stratford. Shalimar and Brennan are the flashy characters, Jesse is the more quiet studious computer geek type who also does mechanical repairs and Emma is downright reticent. The three seasons fall in and out of availability. Aside from providing a sound track dubbed in French there are no other supplements, not even subtitles.

Proving that clothes really do help make the man clad in hand me down loose-fitting dungarees held up by braces and a plaid shirt Victor Webster looks very much the country bumpkin. Even so-clad he seems to retain his sex appeal for women. And to prove it he takes off his clothes in several episodes to show off the muscles underneath and a well-honed six-pack. 

Watching this second season on DVD with episodes back to back one develops a sense of the tension developing between members of the team and their leader Adam. Leaders maintain their position by controlling the flow of information and the reasons for the decisions they make. Increasingly the members of the team demand a more collaborative approach; they come to resent the paternalistic, patronizing methods used on them when they were children.

In the final episode we get to see them blow up the pods at Ontario Place.