The Kill Point: Who's Afraid of Mr. Wolf

The Kill Point is the latest in a long line of bank-robbery-gone-bad/hostage negotiation movies and television shows. Just this past season, I saw similar programming in the likes of The Nine and Standoff, though neither of these programs fared very well. Thankfully, The Kill Point doesn't have to worry about staying on the air because Spike TV would have no reason not to broadcast the remaining episodes of this summer miniseries. True, the first episode was very formulaic, heavy on some tried and true cliches, but it worked and I'm now curious to see how the situation will unfold.

The bank robbery itself nearly went off without a hitch, except for the police arriving earlier than expected. After a lengthy and fierce gun battle in the street, the would-be thieves retreated back inside the bank; save for the getaway driver who was able to run from the scene without incident. So began the hostage situation. Also, so began the cliches. The civilians in the bank included your standard fare: an ineffective guard, a hysterical bank manager, a rich man's daughter and a sickly old man. (Ooh, bonus! The old man is gay.) The hostage takers also had their share of familiar stereotypes. There's the wide-eyed young one, the slightly crazy one and, of course, the cool-headed man in charge, Mr. Wolf.

John Leguizamo as Mr. Wolf is a great choice. He plays the role of "the bad guy you root for" very well. His solid performance worked magic with the less than stellar dialogue, raising the level of the material to above average. His counterpoint on the outside is the negotiator with the perfect track record, Captain Horst Cali, played effectively by former teen heartthrob Donnie Wahlberg.

As the hostage crisis unfolded, it soon came to light that Mr. Wolf and his crew (Rabbit, Mouse, Piggy, Cat) are all former soldiers, having seen action in Iraq. This upped the ante on the negotiation as it became clear Cali couldn't anticipated what these war-hardened veterans are capable of.

The second half of the premiere saw this become a focus as Mr. Wolf threatened to kill one of the hostages if electricity wasn't restored to the building. This gave me some great suspense as I watched Cali struggle with the decision to give in to the demand while Mr. Wolf had to resign himself to the fact that he may very well need to kill an innocent pawn in this cat and mouse game. However, the whole ordeal lost much of its drama with an in-your-face verbal countdown from the head of the SWAT team. Moments like this, that dumbed things down to make sure the audience was ultra-aware of what was going on, kept the episode from being something more than just above average.

As I've stated, a lot of what I saw in this first episode is material I'm familiar with, but the new twists The Kill Point has thrown in has me intrigued. The driver of the getaway car who ran off when the heist went sour hasn't deserted his men. In the closing moments, I saw that he had contacted three other former charges of Mr. Wolf and they were set on getting the rest of their platoon out of there. Equally engaging is the fact that Mr. Wolf was able to get a message to real estate magnate Alan Beck, whose daughter is being held hostage, setting up what looks to be a secondary set of negotiations outside of the control of the police.

Had this been a movie with an ending, I'd probably be less than impressed. But because the story has plenty of room to grow and surprise me, I'm excited to see what the next episode will bring.