The Kill Point: The Devil's Zoo Parts 1 & 2

What an absolutely disappointing summer miniseries The Kill Point turned out to be. Since it began, I've suffered through stereotypes and clichés with very little excitement or drama. The series could have blown me away with one intricate storyline, but instead I was given several "mini stories" that ultimately amounted to nothing. The two-hour finale did nothing to change my opinion, and only presented further proof that this potentially unique take on the hostage/negotiator scenario was put into the wrong hands.

Much of "The Devil's Zoo" was a chaotic mess, bouncing from idea to idea with very little direction. It started with Mike's delusional speech about his "Creepy Me," then moved into Henry's breakdown and temporary control of the bank. This gave way to Wolf's triumphant return to power, complete with the worst choreographed and directed fistfight in recent memory. Then there was Cali's short time inside the bank, followed by the SWAT team storming in and the hostage takers' unoriginal Ocean's 11-like escape. And not one bit of this action was the least bit emotionally resonating.

The Kill Point never gave me a chance to connect and care about any of these characters -- bank robbers, hostages or negotiators. Instead of character development, the series gave me plot after plot after plot. So when it reached the finale and people are being killed off or set free or actually getting away with six million dollars, none of it really mattered.

The best example of this lack of connection in the finale was the wholly unemotional release of the hostages after their lengthy and excruciating ordeal. This should have been a pinnacle moment of the finale, but instead it was just lame. Watching the now free hostages running to and hugging their families (in slow motion no less) pulled zero heartstrings. Heck, I don't even see these hostages as people. The Kill Point only made them recognizable as "bank manager," "black dude," "old gay guy," and "couple who were once hiding in the closet."

With a lack of character development, I might have expected an emphasis on a complicated plot twist in this final episode. The show did make such an attempt, but like they've done all season long with an interesting idea, the twist was poorly executed. Cali, after an unseen meeting with Wolf, was suddenly working with the hostage takers to help them escape. Well, anyone even peripherally following this series could have figured out that Wolf and his men on the outside had somehow gotten their hands on Cali's pregnant wife.

This obvious fact wasn't revealed until after Cali and Wolf's men were sufficiently clear of the now empty bank. Only at that time did Cali think to question Wolf about actually having his wife in their custody and demand some form of proof of life. Are you kidding? Cali helped his nemesis escape without verifying that Wolf was actually holding his wife?! It's bonehead, idiotic, utterly stupid plot points like this that have plagued the series since episode one.

Again, there's no denying this program has left me severely disappointed. Everything that I found interesting at the beginning of this series simply petered away to nothing as the show progressed. The covert deal with Mr. Beck went nowhere. The hostages fighting back went nowhere. Wolf's men working on a plan from the outside failed to live up to its potential… twice. Throughout the series, the dialogue was clunky, the direction was poor and the ultimate payoff was incredibly weak. If Spike TV brings another original miniseries next summer, let's hope they learn from the wasteful mistakes they committed with The Kill Point.

The Kill Point: The Great Ape Escape

The Kill Point is a very frustrating limited series to watch. The idea of it had great potential, but nothing being done in the show is very original. And the unoriginal ideas are being executed poorly, with plenty of "Why don't they just do this?" moments. "The Great Ape Escape" stayed in the same vein as the episodes before it, with plenty of pseudo-tension and ideas that went nowhere.

The episode began incredibly slowly, with much exposition from our bank robbers as they settled down from the near takeover of their unit by the scheming hostages. None of it really mattered much since it did little in the way of giving me new insight into any of these characters. But the action started to pick up a bit when Mr. Wolf was informed that the extraction plan was underway and they would be out in less than two hours. This is what I've been waiting for -- the platoon members on the outside were finally ready to put their plan into action. Unfortunately, it wasn't worth the wait.

Their plan -- the one they've been meticulously preparing for almost from the start of the hostage situation -- was to enter the building next door to the bank and hammer out a hole in the wall. Wow. How creative. In their way were two SWAT members stationed in the adjacent building. This could have been a great opportunity to witness a rarely seen military tactic, but instead, Mr. Wolf gave a speech as a distraction while his men tip-toed up behind the SWAT guys and grabbed them. Sure, Wolf's speech was probably supposed to be a very stirring, impassioned plea for the rights of the soldiers caught in the war (and it was pretty powerful to see what appeared to be actual veterans displaying their real-life amputated arms and scarred bellies), but the monologue was a far cry from anything Emmy-worthy.

Things get a bit silly from there. When the men finally break through the wall, I got to watch five minutes of everybody greeting everyone. Seriously? Shut up and just get out of there already. As unamazing as this plan turned out to be, it was actually about to work and set these men free. Of course, that can't happen. There's more show to deliver. So the writers decided to put one-armed Leon in a car with a headset not 20 feet away from all the SWAT guys surrounding the bank. This is what I can't stand about the show. The characters do (or don't do) things simply to move the plot along. Last week, the hostages got the guns, but Ashley couldn't pull the trigger. She claimed this week that she just couldn't kill the guy. Well, fine -- fire off a round at his legs and get out of there. And now, for no reason whatsoever, Leon is in the exact position he needs to be to allow the cops to get clued in to the escape plan. It's ridiculous.

But now that the SWAT team was aware of where they were heading, maybe I'd get a climactic shootout to bring the episode to a close. Nope, wrong again. Like much of The Kill Point, it was a lot of build up to nothing. The gunfight lasted for quite sometime, but it was the most straightforward battle I've ever seen. And how only two people got hit I'll never know.

The end result? Everyone is back in the bank. The once tight unit ended the episode at odds, with Mike unable to take anymore of it. He wandered out of the bank, unarmed, with Mr. Wolf pleading with him to go back inside. In an unsuccessful attempt to build tension, the scene dragged on forever until finally ending with what sounded like a gunshot. Was somebody hit? Who fired the weapon? At this point, I hardly care.

The Kill Point: Visiting Hours

"Visiting Hours" saw The Kill Point reach the apex of one of its central storylines -- the hostages fight against the bank robbers. The plan provided plenty of action for the episode, as I also saw the outside soldiers advance their plan, establishing communication with Mr. Wolf by the end of the hour. Most everything else in the episode was fairly cheesy and felt often like scene-filler, while the resolution of the hostages vs. bank robbers face-off left quite a bit to be desired.

The hostages' plan to overthrow the bank robbers was surprisingly successful but ended rather idiotically. Their plan required a lot of things to happen at the same time... Beck's daughter seducing one guy and taking his gun, the maintenance man getting into the bathroom (and not closing the stall door?) to turn off the lights, and the others wrestling guns away from the remaining robbers. It was actually kind of impressive that they all pulled it off, with the bank robbers at the other ends of the guns.

My only question: why, oh why, would no one pick up the phone? They had to know it was the police calling -- there's no one else who can call. Couldn't one of hostages not holding a gun (like the Sabian kid) just pick up the ringing phone and mention now would be a good time to come in, since all of the robbers are disarmed? It just seems like the logical next step in their plan, but apparently their plan to take over the guns ended with "point guns at robbers." (And then what... just stand there?)

The outside soldiers launched a rather creative plan this episode, sending in one of their own to talk to Cali and plant a frequency scrambler. Their actions continue to be the most entertaining developments on the show, and it'll be interesting to see if their elaborate plan succeeds or fails in the final two episodes.

The rest of "Visiting Hours" was filled with mainly ineffective material. Cali is visited by his wife, who gives him an extremely fancy scrapbook of ultrasound pictures of their child-to-be, Teddy Sabian first begs the police and then Mr. Wolf for the release of his son, and Cali decides to use Mr. Wolf's long-lost junkie son to help break Wolf down. Cali's and Teddy's gambits both pay off, as the fatherly guilt drives Mr. Wolf to release Bobby, which he was likely also resolved to do anyway since he couldn't use the kid to communicate with Mr. Beck anymore anyway.

In the "storylines I could do without" department, there continued to be more deep thoughts from the police snipers (I'm guessing they're just setting things up for me to care about these characters but it's so not working), the artistic bank robber described the idea behind his "creepy me" comic book sketches, and Mr. Wolf continued to bond with the widow as they burned names of deceased loved ones.

The Kill Point continues to be fairly uneven, but there's enough interesting plots (Will the soldiers break the robbers out? Will the couple trapped in a closet ever come into play for the robbers?) to make the limited series worth watching for the final two episodes.

The Kill Point: No Meringue

The premiere episode of The Kill Point gave an interesting start to this Spike TV miniseries, despite its reliance on many tried-and-true bank robbery/hostage situation clichés. The second episode, "No Meringue," did a fine job keeping the clichés, but left out most of the interesting stuff.

As was expected, the FBI got involved. And like nearly every movie and TV show that shows the FBI taking over for an already established negotiator, things didn't turn out so well for the Feds. Agent Ash was your stereotypical "my way or the highway" bitch. Captain Horst Cali did his best to talk some sense into her, explaining the methods she was using (loud noises, lowering the temperature) weren't going to have any effect on men who lived through winters warring in Afghanistan. The result: Mr. Wolf turned the tables and messed with Ash's head with several entertaining prank phone calls.The episode was very cookie-cutter. FBI comes in, Cali's kicked out, FBI screws up, Cali proves he's the better man by getting another hostage set free. There aren't a lot of people out there that didn't see it coming.

This was also the episode where the hostages started to relate to their captors. Wolf and Robbie shared tales of swimming in shirts. The young ladies played dress up with the expensive jewelry Mr. Pig lifted from safety deposit boxes. Furthermore, Mr. Beck's decision to hire a hit man to take out Wolf was as predictable as everything else. The show is certainly hitting all the appropriate story beats.

Not helping matters was the clunky dialogue used throughout the episode. There were several unnecessary conversations that seemed to be trying to hit a Tarantino-esque tone. I'm referring to the sniper on the roof ruminating about the sodium in his body then switching his focus to a very out-of-place beauty behind the police barriers. Or the SWAT leader talking about Ash's man butt. Or the male team members conversing about nad scratching. Clearly this dialogue was intended to give the episode an edge, but it all sounded silly and out of place to me.

Added to this are all the little things occurring strictly for the purpose of advancing the plot, most of which completely blow the reality of the situation. For example, when Cali had Teddy Sabian introduced to Mr. Beck, the two men didn't shake hands. This led Cali to believe the gentlemen had already met, which is true. Here's the thing, though: why didn't they shake hands?! They both know what's at stake and they're both pretending not to have met before. They would have shook hands; they're not idiots. Or how about the greatest coin-wrapped-in-paper slide across the floor in the history of television? I mean, come on. They have got to do a better job of keeping things realistic or nobody's going to care about the fates of any of these people.

One thing I am enjoying about The Kill Point is the fact that there are men on the outside trying to devise a way of getting their partners out of the bank. The slow burn of this situation is working for me. In this episode, they spent their time scoping out the situation and figuring out logistics. They also foiled Mr. Beck's attempt to free his daughter. At this point, they are the reason I'll keep tuning in. How will they do it? Will they go in guns a-blazing? Will it be a covert operation? Will they find a way to contact their men on the inside? Without these questions, there'd be very little left to care about in The Kill Point.

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.