I saw the pilot to Human Target last summer and I thought it was fun. I had no attachment to the comic book. I just thought here’s an action show I’d probably watch. It opens with a cool pre-title demonstration of Christopher Chance (Mark Valley)’s skills in a tense situation, and explores a high concept action story as an example of what the weekly missions will be.
It’s TV action. I wouldn’t say that the speeding train looks real but they can certainly do more now than they could have in the ‘80s. So I suspend disbelief in order to get my action fix for free at home.
Now that I’ve seen the second episode, I’m really excited about this show. I’d say it’s still TV action, in that the effects look like quicker CGI than the film masters can put in their movies (though we settle for crappy CGI in 90% of Hollywood films anyway). But the ideas behind the action really develop intensely.
The second mission is an airplane one and they do more with a plane in 45 minutes than movies like Passenger 57 or Con Air did in 90 minutes or two hours. Each act between commercial breaks brings a new development. It becomes a suspenseful, complicated series of events that have to be completed to pull off the mission, or even survive. Maybe it’s obvious that they didn’t fly a real plane upside down, but the idea of flying a plane upside down is awesome.
The group dynamic is really fun. Chance and Winston (Chi McBride) are the classic action hero and reluctant partner. Winston complains, but you know McBride is having a blast at it. They have a whole history of scams and routines they can run, so when they name something, the audience knows a cool ruse is coming up.
Guerrero (Jackie Earle Haley) is a total badass. So far he hasn’t been directly involved in the action. He’s been the guy setting up things behind the scenes, but when he threatens low level criminal flunkies, good God he brings it. The show has great comic timing for juxtaposing action clichés with irreverent banter between the trio.
The backstory is pretty standard. He’s a guy with a secret past who does this bodyguard work. His clients are simply high powered women who need to be protected or hackers who’ve broken the code to the entire internet. Yes, the entire internet. We’re not really dealing with technical accuracy here. I kind of applaud them for going, “What important thing can this hacker have done? Screw it, the entire internet!”
Like I said, it’s a simple setup and I’ll be back each week to see some crazy action. I don’t care if Chance was supposed to change his face for every mission. I’m happy to watch the Mark Valley action hero show.
