Don't Cross This Rubicon

The Rubicon is a river in what is now northern Italy. In Roman times, it was illegal for any Roman general from the outlying areas to cross the Rubicon southward without first disbanding his army. Today, "crossing the Rubicon" has come to mean making an irrevocable decision from which there is no turning back.

I like a good spy story, so when American Movie Classics announced its new series, Rubicon, I decided to check it out. The first episode showed some intriguing possibilities, so after watching it, I decided to "cross the Rubicon" and commit myself to following the series.

The main character, Will Travers, is played by James Badge Dale, who was excellent as Private Robert Leckie in the award-winning HBO series The Pacific earlier this year. Travers works for the American Policy Institute (API), an intelligence analysis group that seems to be a front for the CIA or some other national security organization.

Things happen in that first episode. At the beginning, an older man, Thomas Rhumor (Harris Yulin in an uncredited cameo) finds a four-leaf clover next to some newspaper clippings on his desk and promptly decides to blow his brains out. Later that day, Will's boss, David Hadas (Peter Gerety), who is also Will's father-in-law, finds some disturbing similarities in the crossword puzzles of seven major newspapers. It isn't the first time that this has happened, and bad things usually happen when it occurs.

That night, Hadas unexpectedly gives his prized Norton motorcycle to Will. Earlier, he had given Will a note advising him to leave the area. Will calls Hadas, who promises to explain everything to Will the next morning at a clandestine meeting.

That meeting never happens. The next morning, Hadas is apparently killed in the crash of a subway train. But was it really him? There are clues that he may not have been on the train, so we are not sure. (Anyone who stands at the front of the lead car of a subway train as it enters a station surely must have a death wish, and Hadas didn't appear to be suicidal.) Hadas' boss, Kale Ingram (Arliss Howard), persuades Will to take over David's team.

The first episode presents lots of intriguing possibilities, threads, subplots and no doubt some red herrings, and has the makings of a good spy story. There's only one problem. these ideas aren't carried through very well, at least in the next nine episodes.

Nothing much happens in those episodes. The crossword-puzzle story line is left dangling. We have no more idea of what happened to David Halas than we did at the end of the second episode. Will begins to pick up traces of a conspiracy involving Thomas Rhumor, another man who committed suicide 20 years earlier after finding a four-leaf clover on his desk, and Truxton Spanger (Michael Cristopher), the head of API, but even after 10 episodes, we don't know much about it.

There's a subplot featuring Katherine Rhumor (Miranda Richardson), Thomas Rhumor's widow, who is trying to sort out the mystery of her husband's suicide. It seems that Thomas Rhumor was very secretive about many things in his life, but this fine actress is given far too little screen time in her role.

What we have is a story in which no one trusts anyone else and you don't know who are the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys." That's to be expected in a spy story, of course, but the characters are so thinly drawn that you don't really care. Secretaries spy on their bosses, under orders from higher-ups, then get fired when their bosses find out. Bad guys (at least I assume that they are bad guys) bug the apartments and offices of the good guys, the good guys find the bugs and destroy them, then the bad guys come back and plant new ones. Several of the main characters are being followed all of the time. Ho-hum.

Oh yes, Will and Katherine are threatened with termination in Episode 10, but up to this point, the most exciting thing that's happened is that Tanya MacGaffan (Loren Hodges), on of the members of Will's team, has failed a drug test and been forced into API's rehab program. You know the bit--we take care of our own, even if that sometimes means terminating one of our own.

Poor James Badge Dale. He went from a series in which all hell was breaking loose all of the time to one in which nothing ever seems to break loose ever. He seems as bored with the series as I've been. It must be like digging a foxhole and standing in it, waiting for the Japanese to storm your hill--for nine weeks.

If you want to see a film with a similar story line, watch 1975's Three Days of the Condor, starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway in their prime and directed by Sydney Pollack, one of the best directors of his generation. It's a good film and it only takes two hours. And by the way, the villain is played by Max von Sydow, one of the best movie villains of his time. If you're in the mood for a series, try Smiley's People and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, starring Alec Guinness, who is always worth watching.