Z/Web

Author: James Rollins

I’ve never heard of Rollins, but this is an excellent old-fashioned adventure story a la Edgar Rice Burroughs and is surprisingly well-written. The detail is amazing, making everything feel very real, and though the story’s long and complicated with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, they don’t feel forced like with many poor writers (such as Patterson). The story’s wild: a group of regular Alaskans find themselves immeshed in a covert superpower war for control over a secret polar ice station recently discovered. The ice station was lost before WWII, yet contains key technology. The Russians want to blow up the station so the U.S. don’t find the technology, while the U.S. wants to study the find. But both countries would potentially be embarrassed by the contents of the ice station, so everything is being done “off the map,” in secret. The public will never hear of what happens. That means anything goes: murder is okay. So the Alaskans find themselves in the middle of this covert war, with submarines and Delta Force troops. If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s an ancient secret hidden in the ice station: it’s a nest for some prehistoric monsters that still live. These vicious monsters are nicknamed Grendel, after the Beowulf story. Rollins actually uses a lot of science to justify the existence of these creatures, so they come across as quite believable (he’s a vetrinarian in real life and knows how to describe animals). Grendels are extremely dangerous, which puts our civilian heroes in even more jeopardy: now they are hiding from the Russians and the monsters! The result of all this is a nail-biter, can’t-put-down book. It gets a little annoying because every time you think the heroes are saved, the situation gets even worse. It’s “out of the frying pan into the fire” about twenty different times and after a while the tension becomes unbearable. It seems impossible that our heroes will emerge unscathed. But that also makes the ending a sweet relief and the book feverishly exciting. Terrific read. My only real criticism is that the title is extremely lame. Ice Station Grendel would have been a much more descriptive, interesting, and accurate moniker. Looking at the other books Rollins has written, I see similar titular problems (several are much worse than this one), so most likely either he’s not good at creating titles or he lets the publisher pick them. Anyway, you’re not supposed to judge a book by its title, so I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve actually read the books. But if they’re anything like this one, I’ll be happy.

I heard bad things about this going in, but the trailers made it seem cool: it stars the awesome Ben Kingsley as a serial killer killer. Unfortunately, the critics were correct. This film has many problems, mostly with the script. The film starts out well enough, with a series of murders getting the FBI involved. Soon we learn these are “messages” targeting a particular FBI agent who has a troubled background (revealed in flashback, of course). Eventually the FBI guy figures out that all the murder victims are serial killers and so he deduces that this guy is “helping” society — but his superiors don’t agree and want the guy taken out. It’s pretty much at this point that the film tanks. There are several reasons for this. One, the film has built so much around the gimmick of a “serial killing serial killer” that once that’s revealed there isn’t much left to the movie (and of course since that’s revealed in the film’s trailer, you know that going into the movie). Two, the pace of the film’s inconsistent. It starts out glacial, as we investigate murder step-by-step. Then it speeds up, jumping from murder scene to murder scene like a music video, which results in minimizing the significance of the latter murders. Three, the story falls apart and is very choppy and illogical when the FBI meets Ben Kingsley’s character, and in the “climax” of film when they meet up the final serial killer, “suspect zero.” The latter gets his name because he’s a killer under the radar, so good the FBI don’t even know he’s been killing, and yet he’s murdered thousands. Four, the ending is anti-climactic and badly filmed. Most of the time I liked the direction, but the ending consists of the FBI guy and the killer rolling around in dust “fighting” — yet all you can see is their legs entangled as they roll back and forth for like two minutes. Five, the film can be broken into two halves, the search for Kingsley’s character and the “climax” when the FBI finds him and they track down the final serial killer (suspect zero). Unfortunately, there’s no good transition between these halves. Even if the ending were decent, the film would still be awkward and incomplete because of that.

The whole film has a lot of puzzling logistical issues. For instance, I got very confused: I thought one location was supposed to be in Oklahoma City (the FBI guy is based in New Mexico), yet later in the film the FBI guy has a brain wave and rushes to that building to confirm something. He gets there, apparently, in minutes — so either it wasn’t so far away or he’s Flash in disguise. Who knows or cares? A similar problem is at the end, when he’s tracking “suspect zero.” He’s in the middle of nowhere and calls his partner who shows up within minutes, somehow knowing where he is from the phone call. There’s also some real stupidity. Like the FBI standing around in obvious fashion waiting for the serial killer to come home. When the guy drives up, he sees the FBI guy and takes off, provoking a road chase. How stupid is that? Wouldn’t even the dumbest cop know to hide? And even dumber is that the FBI guy’s in an SUV and the killer drives a huge semi… so the SUV, after calling for backup, keeps trying to pass the semi. What for I could never figure out. Backup is coming, the semi’s not getting away, so why risk your life trying to pass the semi? Basically the scriptwriter needed more action at the end and so forced a pointless high speed chase. Oh dear, there are so many problems with this film I could go on and on. It’s a fine concept and the direction’s actually pretty good, but unfortunately the foundation (the script) is unfinished. A waste of potential.