Quentin's box of tricks

Quentin's box of tricks
Nancy Banks-Smith
Wednesday July 13, 2005
The Guardian

If you are a CSI fan looking forward to the delayed transmission of the season finale, we suggest you read no further than this paragraph. Nancy Banks-Smith's review, printed in today's Guardian and reproduced here, was written before Five decided to pull the show due to yesterday's developments in the London bombings investigations. The review below gives away rather more plot than you would probably want to know.

Grave Danger, a two-hour CSI: Crime Scene Investigation special directed by Quentin Tarantino, was Five's wrecking ball, intended to reduce the opposition to rubble, but it was almost wrecked itself by last week's terrorism. Showing some character, Five went ahead anyway. "Are you a terrorist?" Grissom asks a kidnapper at one point. "It depends," he replies. "Only if you are terrified."

Nick (George Eads), a forensic investigator with CSI, is buried in a glass coffin and being eaten alive by fire ants. His agonised image is transmitted by a live feed - perhaps an unfortunate phrase - back to his friends and family. Or as agonised an image as his nobly immobile features permit.

Grave Danger looks like a metaphor to me. Here is a man in a glass box which can be illuminated at will. We see him clearly, but he can't see us. The kidnapper sounds like a presenter: "And now for your viewing pleasure..." We are detached from the situation. It entertains us. We have seen something of the sort before, even to the ants, in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Around this brightly lit glass box is a city of dreadful night.

Tarantino takes his time. Grissom (William L Petersen) reveals a soft spot for Roy Rogers and Trigger the Wonder Horse. Tony Curtis, in a time-defying wig, jokes about Some Like It Hot. Nick's kidnapper asks for $1m, then blows himself up, and the air is filled with floating bills. A dead dog is dug up. (Did you know dogs have no appendix? Why is that do you suppose?) By now Nick is flooded with green light like corruption made visible. His glass coffin and his composure have begun to craze. The fire ants arrive.

Grissom, a pretty weird specimen himself, is an authority on ants. He has his own entomological library, not to mention his trunk and head collection. So we won't mention it. Grissom knows a solenopsis invicta when he sees one. Now it is merely a matter of finding their habitat and dealing with a booby-trapped coffin ("I need a karabiner!") By happy chance, there is one to hand.

You may be wondering what the blazes the kidnapper thinks he is playing at. Nick's incarceration, it appears, is revenge for the kidnapper's daughter, imprisoned on CSI evidence. I must say that, with his expertise in explosives, he could have blown the prison wall down with far less effort and to better effect.