Iman | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, an old friend of Sonny’s comes to Miami.

Episode 2.11 “Back In The World”

(Dir by Don Johnson, originally aired on December 6th, 1985)

Directed by Don Johnson himself, Back In The World opens in the closing days of the Vietnam War. A war correspondent named Ira Stone (played by Bob Balaban) has discovered that the bodies of American soldiers are being packed with heroin before being shipped back to the United States. He shares the discovery with his best friend, a young Marine named Sonny Crockett.

Ten years later, Sonny is a member of Miami Vice and laughing as he watches the DEA go all out to arrest two rich kids who have a few pounds on weed on them. Meanwhile, Ira Stone is still a journalist but it’s been a while since he’s had a major byline. Stone has become known for being erratic and paranoid. His own wife (played by Patti D’Arbanville, who was Johnson’s girlfriend at the time this episode was filmed) describes Stone as being a crazed junkie who spends his time chasing imaginary enemies. Sonny discovers just how paranoid Stone has become when Stone approaches him and asks for help in exposing the truth about the heroin trade.

Stone has a lot of theories, the majority of which involve rogue elements of the CIA. Sonny agrees to help Stone investigate a lead but he’s skeptical of Stone’s theories. But then someone launches a mortar attack on Sonny and Stone while they’re talking on a motorboat. “INCOMING!” Stone yells as Sonny steers the boat through a shower of explosions. As out there as Ira Stone may be, he’s obviously made someone uncomfortable.

Could that someone be William Maynard (G. Gordon Liddy, who was one of the Watergate burglars)? Maynard is a former (and maybe current) CIA agent who, in Vietnam, was renowned for his ability to track down and destroy the enemy. Now, Maynard lives in a Miami mansion with his wife (Susan Hatfield) and a mute servant who has a tendency to show up whenever someone needs to be killed. While Crockett and Stone investigate Maynard, Tubbs and Switek (who is dressed as a leather-clad biker for some reason) investigate an exotic drug currier named Dakotah (Iman).

It’s an intriguing story but it ends on a rather conventional note, with Crockett and Tubbs launching an assault on one of Maynard’s mansions in the Everglades. It’s probably not a coincidence that the Everglades are filmed to resemble a Vietnamese jungle. At one point, Crockett nearly shoots in Tubbs by mistake, a stark reminder of the confusion that comes with combat. In the end, Maynard escapes, Stone is seriously wounded, and the heroin trade continues. There aren’t many happy endings to be found in Miami.

This was an uneven but entertaining episode. The use of The Doors on the soundtrack was occasionally effective and occasionally heavy-handed. The opening Vietnam montage was done well but it fell apart as soon as middle-aged and gravelly-voiced Don Johnson showed up as a fresh-faced Marine in his 20s. That said, once the action moved to Miami and the present day, Don Johnson was never less than convincing as a battle-scarred veteran still trying to come to terms with what happened in Vietnam. G. Gordon Liddy was entertaining as Maynard, even if it was obvious that acting was not his main thing. Bob Balaban’s manic intensity (“INCOMING!” “MEDIC!”) made Ira Stone into a fascinating character. A visit by Crockett and Stone to a VA hospital not only leads to an important lead but it also allows the show to discuss the shameful way that America treated (and treats) veterans of unpopular wars. Johnson did a good job directing the episode but it still never quite escaped the shadow of the thematically-similar Bushido.

Incidentally, my father used to have a “G. Gordon Liddy For President” bumper sticker. And I’ve got a beat-up copy of Liddy’s autobiography, one that I purchased from Recycled Books in Denton a few years ago. After watching this week’s episode, I think I’ll give it a read.

Trust no one in Washington would seem to be the message of this 1987 thriller.

Kevin Costner plays Lt. Commander Tom Farrell, a Naval Intelligence officer who is hailed as a hero after saving a shipmate who falls overboard. In Washington, Tom is recruited by a friend from college, Scott Pritchard (Will Patton), to work for Secretary of Defense Brice (Gene Hackman). Brice doesn’t trust the head of the CIA (played by future senator, Fred Dalton Thompson) and he wants Tom to serve as his mole within the service. What Brice doesn’t know is that Tom is sleeping with Brice’s mistress, Susan Atwell (Sean Young).

Still, Brice does suspect that the woman with whom he is cheating is also cheating on him. When he confronts her about it, their argument leads to him accidentally pushing Susan over an upstairs railing. Pritchard, who is implied to be in love with Brice, takes charge of the cover-up and decides to push the story that Susan was killed by a possibly mythical Russian agent who is known only by the name “Yuri.”

Tom assists with the investigation of her death, both because he wants to know who killed Susan and also because he knows that there’s evidence in Susan’s apartment that could be manipulated to make him look guilty of the crime. For instance, Susan took a picture of Tom shortly before her death. The picture failed to develop but, through the use of what was undoubtedly cutting edge technology in 1987, Naval Intelligence is slowly unscrambling the picture. For Tom, it’s a race against time to find the actual killer before the picture develops and he’s accused of both killing Susan and being Yuri.

Everyone has an agenda in No Way Out, from the ambitious Brice to the fanatical Scott Pritchard to the head of the CIA, who wants Brice to approve funding for a costly submarine. Even the film’s nominal hero has an agenda, which has less to do with finding justice for Susan and everything to do with protecting himself and his future. In fact, as is revealed in the film’s enjoyable if slightly implausible twist ending, some people in Washington have multiple agendas. The film portrays Washington as being a place where, behind the stately facade, everyone is a liar and everyone is ultimately a pawn in someone else’s game. If you have the right connections, you can even get away with murder. Loyalty is rewarded until you’re no longer needed.

It’s an enjoyably twisty thriller, one that makes good use of the contrast between Kevin Costner’s All-American good looks and his somewhat shady screen presence. The film introduces Costner as being a character who, at first glance, seems almost too good to be true and then spend the majority of its running time suggesting that is indeed the case. Gene Hackman is well-cast as the weaselly cabinet secretary, as is Sean Young as the woman who links them all together. In the end, though, the film is stolen by Will Patton, who plays Scott Pritchard as being someone who has unknowingly given his loyalty to a man who is incapable of returning it. As played by Patton, Scott is an outsider who desperately wants to be an insider and who is willing to do just about anything to accomplish that goal. He’s a version of Iago who never turned against Othello but instead devoted all of his devious tricks to trying to cover up the murder of Desdemona.

Even with an over-the-top final twist, No Way Out holds up well as a portrait of how the lust for power both drives and corrupts our political system.