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Falcón

Falcón (DVD Cover)

Recurring character(s): DI Javier Falcón (Marton Csokas), Consuelo Jiménez (Hayley Atwell), Inés Conde De Tejada (Emilia Fox), Esteban Calderón (Santiago Cabrera), José Luis Ramírez (Charlie Creed-Miles)

Director: Various

Original air date(s): 01/00/1900
DVD Date: 07/02/2013

Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 179 minutes

Note(s): Based on the novels by Robert Wilson.

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Falcón

Review: Marton Csokas stars as Seville (Spain) Detective Inspector Javier Falcón in this UK-produced crime drama, consisting of two 90-minute episodes adapted from the first two novels in a series by Robert Wilson.

In "The Blind Man of Seville", Falcón investigates the death of a man, whose eyelids had been cut out, forcing him to watch a film shown on a blank wall. (Some of the scenes in these episodes are definitely rather gruesome.) The clues lead to some event in the past, one that eventually includes Falcón's own immediate family and finally Falcón himself. The story seems to be far too complicated for a television screenplay, even a feature-length one, and it's obvious that there are lots of shortcuts taken along the way. Even so, it's stylishly produced and directed, and a solid introduction to the character.

There is some continuity between the first episode and the second, "The Silent and the Damned", but they are distinct cases. This investigation is also unnecessarily complicated with too many tangential elements, but like the one before it, far more good than not.

Falcón as played by Marton Csokas is a character that's hard to embrace. Yes, he's conflicted on both a personal and professional level, but so are most other literary detectives, to the point where it is a cliché, and an unfortunate one at that. Here Csokas walks a fine line between character and caricature. And no, I didn't particularly like the way the part was played. I can't tell if that's just the way Csokas chose to portray him, or if the director had something to do with it.

On balance, I do recommend Falcón and hope additional episodes are produced. The second episode ends in such a way that leaves the door open to future cases for the detective, investigations that could be original screenplays and not (necessarily) based on the two other books in the series.

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