You haven’t known true intimidation until you’ve looked into James Spader’s eyes. The 57-year-old actor, known for films like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Wall Street, as well as shows like The Practice and Boston Legal, is blessed with such ocular precision (an actual line fromBoston Legal) that when his character, Robert California, was introduced inThe Office, the promos giddily played up his mesmerising gaze — and its palpable effects on Jim Halpert and friends.
Spader’s charisma and his inimitable lilting voice are network television gold. They are the beating heart of NBC’s The Blacklist , an up-and-down crime thriller that leans heavily on the Spader charm. Its sometimes-ridiculous plot lines aside, the show (currently in the middle of its fourth season) is blessed with stunning set pieces, memorable guest performances and a solid support cast.
Spader plays Raymond “Red” Reddington, an ex-US navy officer who’s now one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals, a deal-maker extraordinaire known as ‘the concierge of crime’. The show begins with Red turning himself over to the FBI — on purpose, of course. He collaborates with an FBI task force to catch criminals that they didn’t even know existed, an elite, shadowy ensemble that Red dubs ‘The Blacklist’. As the task force soon realises, Red’s motives are seldom what they appear to be. Several of the blacklisters are business rivals or pawns in a larger game that he’s playing.
Red only deals with Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone), a psych profiler who may or may not be his long-lost daughter. This story arc has been compelling and frustrating in equal measure: the will he, won’t he dynamic is right up Spader’s lane, but there’s only so much mileage you can extract out of this eminently Manmohan Desai premise.
The rest of the cast is ably commandeered by Diego Klattenhoff and Harry Lennix, playing FBI agents Donald Ressler and Harold Cooper, respectively. Ryan Eggold has become one of television’s heartthrobs after his role as Tom Keen, the assassin-turned-good-guy. Notable guest roles include the always chilling Peter Stormare as Berlin, a former comrade of Red’s who is now gunning for him and what’s his.
As always, there are plausibility issues with the show, not least the idea that there are literally hundreds of American criminal masterminds that the FBI has never heard of, or that a friendly Mossad (!) routinely lends agents to them. But these doubts and fears melt away when Red fixes his gaze on you and begins one of his trademark anecdotes (there is an entire Reddit page devoted to these) — about his stint in an Aymara village in Bolivia, the heavenly Osso Bucco he had in Marrakesh, the yakuza firefight he witnessed in Japan… the list is almost as interminable as The Blacklist itself, and every bit as enjoyable.
Stream The Blacklist on Netflix India.
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