Elwood Reid

Does everyone know the real story of the man who used a bomb to skyjack a plane back in the early 70s? Elwood Reid takes the real-life events of D.B. Cooper and turns them into two parallel stories. Fitch's sounds like a bad country song. He loses his wife, his job, and his Dodge Dart all in quick succession. In truth, it reminded me of a movie called Dead Presidents where a man, down on his luck, is forced into a life of crime because he cannot catch a break the honest way. He tries and tries but finally decides he needs a one-time, single-payout super crime. Something huge that will take him away from it all for the rest of his life. As an interesting aside, Dan Cooper, aka Fitch, skyjacks a plane for $200,000. Today, that same sum would be worth $1,519,362.96 Not too shabby.
On the other side of the narrative is newly retired FBI agent Frank Marshall. Typical of most law enforcement, Marshall can't immediately give up all he has ever known for a life of leisure. He still feels the need to protect a female witness with whom he is slowly falling in love, he continuously carries the finger bone of a murder he couldn't solve, and occasionally thinks about a man who jumped from a Seattle-bound 727. When a fresh faced eager agent approaches Marshall about putting down the bottle to help him with the still-open D.B. Cooper case, Marshall feels the tug of solving the old mysteries. Is it possible D.B. Cooper survived the jump? Is he still out there?… (mehr)

(CONTAINS SPOILERS) A female murder victim is dumped across the border line on the bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. When the victim proves to be victims, one half American judge, the other half Mexican unfortunate, a task force is set up that brings together Marco Ruiz, the only honest cop in Juarez, and Sonya Cross, the Asperger genius of the El Paso Police Dept. I don’t know which sounds more improbable on paper, but in action I was able to suspend my disbelief as I watched Demian Bichir’s performance. I couldn't do that for Diana Kruger’s idiot savant, much as I like her.
The story is propelled by the crimes of an evil genius who in the beginning dons the guise of a crazed do-gooder trying to expose the injustices of the border but in the ends reveals himself to be on a personal vendetta against Ruiz, a vendetta that ends in one of the most brutal and heartbreaking deaths that I’ve seen on television. Behind this plot are various machinations connected to the drug trade and the missing girls of Juarez.
I liked this plot, especially since I couldn’t predict most of the twists at the first half, but of course I’ve seen this kind of story, whether well done or not, many times, and I wouldn’t find this one memorable just because it was good. What I will remember about The Bridge is the setting, a world more colorful and desperate and horrible that any one fiend could create, and the characters, who were developed fully, even if that meant slowing the story down. I have been irritated when crime authors, like P. D. James and Elizabeth George, slow their novels to a glacial pace just to make every character three dimensional. I didn’t mind it much here, since the characters were well written and well acted, and their needs and wants fueled the plot, instead of vice versa. I found it a great show, though often wrenching to watch.… (mehr)