Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe [Blu-ray]

On USA’s exceptionally entertaining caper drama Burn Notice, Jeffrey Donovan plays a tightly-coiled but highly effective ex-secret agent trying desperately to reenter the CIA and who handles domestic crime cases to earn a living in the meantime. As a counterpoint to Donovan’s tense, hyper-agile but no-nonsense crime fighter, the producers cast Bruce Campbell as his polar opposite: an ex-Navy seal who’s effective in his own right but is a much more laid back and easy-going operative offering the viewer a comic respite from an overly aggressive bulldog leading character. In the made-for-TV film Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe, we’re offered the last Navy Seal operation Sam Axe worked before relocating to Miami to live the good life (and assist his ex-CIA friend on his sometimes loony cases). But what happens when you produce a hard-driving military operation drama and have an easy-going, joke-filled character as your solo protagonist? The result is a movie at war with itself, wanting desperately to provide edge-of-your-seat thrills but at the same time constantly needing to service the almost blasé attitude of its appealing but somewhat ill-suited leading man.

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