Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.21 “Ground Zero”

Posted on September 28, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988. The entire show can be found on Tubi!

This week, the first season comes to a close.

Episode 1.21 “Gound Zero”

(Dir by Peter Medak, originally aired on March 13th, 1987)

In Las Vegas, the media is focused on two things: the upcoming atomic bomb test at Yucca Flats and the trial of Ray Luca.

Pauli, the star witness, is being kept in an underground bunker at an Air Force base. Danny comments on the fact that, if America and Russia do go to war and an atomic missile hits Nevada, Pauli would probably be the only survivor. It would be up to Pauli to repopulate the planet. Torello eventually allows Pauli’s girlfriend, Donna (Audrey Matson), to start visiting him. Donna says she loves Pauli. Torello shrugs.

Pauli keeps his end of the deal. He testifies against Luca. However, Frank Holman gives an interview outside the courtroom and tells the press that Luca was the king of organized crime in Las Vegas. The next day, the headline of the local newspaper announces that Luca was the “king of crime.” Disguising himself as the waiter assigned to deliver room service to the sequestered jury, Holman makes sure that the jurors see the headline. The trial judge has no choice but to declare a mistrial. As he walks out of the courtroom, Luca stops in front of Pauli and tells him, “You did what you had to do,” and apologizes for raping Donna.

In Vegas, Luca is upset to discover that gangster Nat Martino (James Russo) is moving in on his territory. Luca is prepared to go to war, but Manny Weisbrod informs Luca that he is to work with Martino. Weisbrod no longer has any confidence in Luca’s abilities. At the same time, Torello learns that Martino is actually an informant. Torello arranges for that information to get leaked to Luca. When Luca heads over to Martino’s favorite brothel, Torello and the other members of the MCU are waiting for him.

Breaking into Martino’s room, Luca manages to shoot and kill Martino before taking several bullets himself. Wounded, Luca escapes through a back window. Pauli, having decided that his place is with Luca, is there to pick him up and drive him out of town.

The next day, a bandaged Luca discovers that Pauli has driven him out to his latest hideout, a seemingly abandoned house in the desert. The house is full of mannequins. Luca looks at a chair and sees that it is the property of the Atomic Energy Commission. Realizing that they’re at Yucca Flats, Pauli and Luca run out to Pauli’s car. As they drive through the desert, a mushroom cloud blossoms in the distance.

And the episode ends!

Did Luca and Pauli escape the nuclear test? Hopefully, we’ll find out next week. I hope they did because it’s hard to imagine Crime Story without them. They were a great pair of villains.

The first season was good, if uneven. The pilot was outstanding, but some of the subsequent Chicago episodes seemed to lose their focus. Torello’s domestic drama was never as interesting as the show wanted it to be, and it took me a while to really warm up to David Abrams and his abrasive idealism. The other members of the MCU often felt like ciphers. (Even after 21 episodes, I still don’t feel like I know much about any of them beyond their almost cult-like loyalty to Torello.) But when the show moved to Vegas, things improved immeasurably. The glitz of Vegas worked perfectly for the show’s hyperreal style, and Stephen Lang’s performance in the role of David Abrams improved as well.

That said, Dennis Farina was the main strength of the first season. Farina played Torello as being intense, ruthless, and maybe just a little unhinged. The only real difference between Luca and Torello is that Torello carries a badge and Luca doesn’t have the Constitution holding him back. Otherwise, Luca really does represent Torello’s own dark side. In his pursuit of Luca, Torello isn’t just trying to enforce the law. He’s also trying to destroy the man that, had Torello not joined the police force, he could have become.

Next week, we’ll start the second season!

Film Review: High Plains Drifter (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Posted on May 31, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1973’s High Plans Drifter, Clint Eastwood plays …. The Stranger.

No, not the Man With No Name. The Stranger has a name but he chooses not to share it. That said, when one person says that he doesn’t even know the Stranger’s real name, the Stranger replies, “Yes, you do.” The Stranger appears to emerge from the heat of the desert, riding into the small mining town of Lago and gunning down the three bullies that the townspeople hired to protect them after the murder of their town marshal. With no other option, the townspeople accept the Stranger as the town’s new protector.

The Stranger is drawn to the town and the townspeople but he doesn’t seem to particularly like any of them, with the exception of Mordecai (Billy Curtis), the dwarf that the Stranger appoints as the town’s new sheriff. The townspeople, the majority of whom are cowardly and motivated by greed, aren’t particularly likable themselves. The Stranger rules the town like a dictator, kicking everyone out of the hotel so that he can have it for himself and ordering that every building in the town be painted red. Over the town’s welcome sign, he paints one word: “Hell.” When the townspeople see how well the Stranger can shoot, they celebrate in the belief that they’ll always be safe. The Stranger responds by leaving town just as three sadistic outlaws, led by Stacey Bridges (Geoffrey Lewis), approach. The Stranger may be looking for revenge on Bridges but he also seems as if he wants to make the town suffer for its sins as well.

Much as with the case of The Man With No Name, the Stranger is not motivated by kindness or any sort of concern for the safety of the townspeople. He often shows a cruel-streak when it comes to dealing with the cowardly townspeople. He doesn’t attack unless he’s attacked first but once you’re on his bad side, he’ll gun you down without a hint of emotion. When the Stranger sleeps, he is haunted by nightmares of the previous marshal (played by Buddy Van Horn, Clint Eastwood’s stunt double) being murdered by Bridges and his men while the townspeople stood by and did nothing. We learn that the townspeople, worried that it might be bad for their business interests, didn’t even give the late marshal a decent headstone after his death. One woman mentions that spirits can’t rest unless they have a proper marker….

Getting the idea?

High Plains Drifter is probably the closest that Eastwood has ever come to making a supernatural horror film. The Stranger may or may not be a vengeful ghost (the movie leaves that for you to decide) but he turns the small town of Lago into his own personal version of Hell and, when he attacks the men who killed the marshal, he moves with the ruthless determination of a slasher villain. The scene where Bridges and his men ride into the town is like a filmed nightmare. This is a dark film, one in which Eastwood’s Stranger is not the hero because he’s particular heroic but just because everyone else in the film is so bad.

This was also Eastwood’s second film as a director (following Play Misty For Me) and also the first of many westerns that Eastwood would direct. The imagery is often haunting, all the more so because some of the most violent scenes take place in broad daylight. The scenes where the Stranger seems to materialize out of the desert’s heatwaves perfectly capture the mythology of the old west and its “heroes.” Eastwood gets good performances out of his ensemble cast and, even more importantly, he shows that Eastwood the director had a perfect understanding of Eastwood the actor. As the Stranger, Eastwood says more with a snarl or a half-smile than most actors could say with a multi-page monologue.

High Plains Drifter is violent, often disturbing, and ultimately unforgettable.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Runaway Train (dir by Andrei Konchalovsky)

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1985’s Runaway Train, Eric Roberts plays Buck McGeehy, a prisoner at Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison in Alaska.

Like the majority of the prisoners, Buck looks up to Manny (Jon Voight), a bank robber who has just been released from spending three years in solitary confinement. Manny is a tough guy who refuses to allow the prison system to beat him down. Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) views Manny as being a threat to his authority and he’s especially angry that it was the courts that ordered that Manny finally be released from solitary. When Ranken tries to arrange for Manny to be assassinated at a prison boxing match, it’s Buck who saves Manny’s life. When Manny later manages to escape from the prison, Buck tags along.

Manny and Buck are a study in contrasts. Manny is as cold as the Alaskan landscape. He’s ruthless and doesn’t allow himself to get too close to anyone but, at the same time, he does live by a definite code. Buck is simple-minded, an earnest guy who talks too much and who probably wouldn’t have survived a day in prison if it wasn’t for his skill as a boxer. Buck and Manny manage to make their way across the frozen wilderness but, when they hop on a train, they soon find themselves trapped on the out-of-control locomotive, along with a railroad engineer named Sara (Rebecca De Mornay). The three of them have to find a way to either escape from or stop the train. At the same time, the obsessed Warden Ranken is determined to recapture Manny and, if that means flying a helicopter over the train so that Ranken can lower himself onto it, so be it.

Runway Train, which was based on a script by Akira Kurosawa, was one of the few Cannon films to find success with not just critics but also audiences and the industry. The Golden Globes nominated it for Best Film. The Academy didn’t go quite that far but they did nominate the film for Best Editing, along with also nominating Jon Voight for Best Actor and Eric Roberts for Best Supporting Actor. While Voight is a multiple-Oscar nominee (and one-time winner for Coming Home), Runaway Train is, so far, the only film for which Eric Roberts has been nominated. (He should have been nominated for Star 80 but his character in that film was a bit too realistically sleazy for the Academy to honor.) Roberts has described Runaway Train as being one of his favorite films and he even used the title for his autobiography. It was on this film that he met Danny Trejo, who not only trained Roberts for the boxing scenes but also helped Roberts kick his addiction to cocaine.

And Roberts has every reason to be proud. Runaway Train is a fast-moving, visually stunning thrill ride, a masterpiece of the pulp imagination. Yes, the symbolism of the runaway train is a bit obvious. Yes, the philosophical edge of the film’s dialogue can sometimes feel a bit out-of-place. Who cares? John Voight and Eric Roberts sell their characters with such skill that you don’t care that they’re both criminals who have done terrible things. From the minute we see that frozen jail and the prisoners tossing burning pieces of paper at the guards, we know why both Manny and Buck have to escape. John P. Ryan turns the warden into everyone’s worst nightmare of a small, pretty man with power, an authoritarian who uses the system to control the lives of others and who resents anyone who does not bow down before him. Even though her role is largely limited to reacting to what everyone else does around her, Rebecca de Mornay still turns Sara into a compelling character and never allows her to become merely a damsel in distress. Runaway Train is a heart-pounding action film and one that still holds up today.