The New God Of Action Fiction.

Imagine James Bond sprinting at top speed along the edge of a cliff with a sheer ten thousand feet-drop on the one-side & a crack team of the world’s best assassins, their high-tech firearms blazing in full fury, closing in on him from the other. Tied to Bond’s wrist is a remote-controlled device set to detonate a nuclear bomb hidden beneath White House set to go off in exactly 99 seconds. A handful of military copters & fighter jets belonging to hostile countries are hovering above him & a few dozen army jeeps with mounted machine guns spewing fire behind. The cliff drops to a lagoon infested by only a few hundreds of sharks, crocodiles & killer whales, & 50 yards in front of him is a group of the fiercest, deadliest aliens in the universe. He’s just run on to a stretch of quicksand, the girl accompanying him is bleeding, his gun has just dried up & an enemy Destroyer out in the sea, a short distance from the coast, has just launched a missile aimed at the spot where Bond is standing.
Imagined that? Ok. Now make Bond a United States Marine Corps & make him undergo similar situations & worse ones for 600 pages in a row. That should give you some idea about Matthew Reilly’s novels.
Alistair MacLean & Jack Higgins are 2 writers I’ve considered to be the twin Gods of action/adventure/crime fiction [when it comes to detective stories, it’s Dame Christie all the way, of course]. However, 3 years ago, when I was staying in Pune, my cousins got me hooked to Matthew Reilly, & over the last 3 years, I’ve grudgingly given in to the fact that the world of the aforementioned category of popular fiction has, in fact, 3 Gods, Reilly being the 3rd.
Over a period of 12 years beginning in 1996, Reilly, a native of Australia, has written 9 novels. These are:
1. Contest,
2. Ice Station,
3. Temple,
4. Area 7,
5. Scarecrow,
6. Hover Car Racer,
7. Seven Ancient Wonders,
8. Hell Island,
9. The Six Sacred Stones.
Of these, I am yet to read Temple & Hell Island. Reilly has penned a few short stories as well, which can be downloaded for free from his site.
Reilly’s writing comes across more as novelized versions of films than as original novels. However, this cannot be held against him; it is his own style of movie-making, wherein the movie is played out not on a celluloid screen, but on the pages of a novel. Like the Harry Potter books, Reilly’s writing literally drives the reader’s imagination over the edge with a never-ending bullet train of explosive action in page after page after page.
Reilly, by his own confession, is an action/adventure movie/novel freak. His thoughts are occupied by Jurassic Park, Jaws, Alien, Predator, The Terminator, Indiana Jones & James Bond. In fact, his narrative is strewn with elements used in these films & books. Indeed, his first three novels, Contest, Ice Station & Temple come across as split-in-unequal-parts episodes from the Alien Vs. Predator movie series. His fascination with James Bond comes to the forefront in Area 7, in which the scenes set in space are straight out of the Roger Moore-starrer 007 movie Moonraker. There's a fair bit of repetition too in plot premises & outlines. For example, Area 7 comes across as a better-fleshed-out version of Ice Station.
Reilly’s prime success, however, lies in creating one of the best actions heroes the sphere of popular fiction with an international reach has ever seen, or will ever see: Shane Schofield. Ian Fleming created the immortal James Bond; Robert Ludlum came up with Jason Bourne [notice the common initials & the similar-sounding name], a darker alter-ego of 007 with a sinister, mysterious, half-lost past; Higgins created the delightful Liam Devlin & Sean Dillon. Reilly has Schofield, a USMC Captain [Reilly’s other major hero, Jack West Jr., is similar to Schofield, but is yet to reach such dizzying heights of popularity as Schofield already has] with the call-sign ‘Scarecrow’, resulting from the 2 hideous scars running down from his forehead across his eyes to his cheeks.
I love reading, & have always been a voracious reader, known to have finished 700-page-long books in one day [or one night, which is more often the case]. In fact, if it’s written either in English or Bengali, is a piece of fiction [classic or contemporary] & comes in the form of a book, chances are that I’ll probably read it. Despite the downside of all-night marathon reading sessions like bloated electricity bills & sleepwalking, zombie-like, thru the following day, finishing off a good book at one go gives me the euphoric feeling of winning a battle, no less. But there was a time during my college years when I’d drifted away from this highly addictive, richly productive & deeply satisfying passion. The Harry Potter books, of which I’m an undying fan, brought me back to the world of books. Now, Matthew Reilly has got me hooked & cooked. Keep’em coming, mate!!!

Delectable!!!

For over 2-&-a-half decades, the Indiana Jones series has been one of Hollywood’s most popular movie franchises, alongside the likes of James Bond, Rambo, Rocky, The Terminator, etc [there are a few others I have omitted to mention]. The first 3 films in the series had all released within a few years of each other in the 1980s, the last one, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, sharing audience attention with Batman & Licensed To Kill in summer 1989.
Having heard rave reviews about Indiana Jones & his adventures from friends but not having seen any of them, I was determined to catch the just-released 4th installment, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, & did so at the newly-opened PVR multiplex close to my pad last weekend. I was expecting a lot of fireworks, & the evergreen Harrison Ford as Prof. Henry Jones did not disappoint.
The plot premise is not quite novel. Jones must return a rare crystal skull to the jungles of Peru. The skull is believed to be one of several & possesses tremendous supra-normal powers. A team of Nazi officers, who have kidnapped Jones’s old friends Marion Ravenwood & Prof. Oxley, are also looking for the skull, as they believe the skull will pass on its powers to whoever possesses it. It’s something like National Treasure minus Nicolas Cage meets The Phantom minus The Ghost Who Walks meets Lara Croft – Tomb Raider minus Angelina Jolie meets E.T. minus the alien meets The Mummy minus the evil undead meets King Kong minus the gorilla. There are shades of Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow as well. All this, however, does not lessen the entertainment. Most of the scenes are mounted on a spectacular level. Worthy of special mention is the long-drawn car-chase sequence thru the forest & along the edge of a cliff along a stretch of giant ant-infested land & the bike-chase sequence soon after Jones meets Mutt Williams. The opening sequence, which introduces the Soviets & Jones, is almost Bond-esque in its breakneck pace.
If friends who’ve watched this one & the previous films [or at least one or two of them] & reviews on IMDB are to be trusted, this is the weakest film in the entire series. Although I’ve not seen any of the earlier films, I have a feeling that this is true. Ford himself is in rip-roaring form & is ably supported by Shia LaBeouf & the feisty Karen Allen, but as already mentioned above, there’s nothing much that has not been done or seen earlier. The KGB angle, though as hackneyed as Hitler’s Nazis in 2 of the earlier films, can be excused as the story itself belongs to that period, i.e. the late 1950s. What is a big let-downer, however, is the absence of a formidable, awe-inspiring villain; Cate Blanchett as the psychically-inclined KGB officer Spalko is just not good enough.
Ford is one of those actors I’d pay to watch any time; his villainous turn opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath was chilling. That was eight years ago, and the edge has not dimmed at all. This is what I like most in actors like Ford, Sean Connery [the ultimate 007?? Probably not, but pretty close to it], Sly Stallone, & GOD [spelt A-M-I-T-A-B-H B-A-C-H-C-H-A-N].
My James Bond collection on video is nearly complete but for the steely Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale. Maybe in some time I shall include Indiana Jones in that collection as well. For someone going backwards, the 4th film was a good beginning, all said & done. Would I recommend it? I already have. Go watch it.