'Criminal Intent': Cop Drama's Winning Formula
By: Tom Shales
September 29, 2001
Washington Post
Producer Dick Wolf, king of cut-and-dried crime shows, has cut and dried another one for your viewing pleasure. "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," the second spinoff from Wolf's "Law & Order" template, will be a viewing pleasure mainly for those who are already fans of Wolf's wares.
This means one gets lotsa plot, very little characterization, a slam-bang docudrama style and, of course, a solemn-toned announcer at the beginning to describe the premise. This one, it turns out, is about the exploits of New York's "Major Case Squad," whose detectives deal only with, well, major cases.
But haven't some of the cases on "Law & Order" been major? We'll just have to overlook that. And based on the quality-level of the "Criminal Intent" premiere (at 9 tomorrow on Channel 4), that's worth overlooking.
The best thing about the show is that its cast is so overqualified for it. Vincent D'Onofrio is one of the most inspired and versatile young actors of our time. He was unforgettable in an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" in which he barely moved; he spent most of it trapped under a subway car.
In "Criminal Intent" he plays a hyper-intuitive detective who scans every crime scene like a dauntless superhero with X-ray vision. He's also something of a philosopher. When his partner, ably played by Kathryn Erbe, points out to him that he's just said something good about the "bad guys," D'Onofrio says, "Bad guys do what good guys dream."
Of course, just because he's a philosopher doesn't mean his philosophy holds water. That line, from writer-producer Rene Balcer, sounds snappy but does not stand up under analysis. The thing is, the show zips along so fast that D'Onofrio could be reciting the Russian alphabet and you might not notice until he was halfway through it.
Courtney B. Vance as an assistant district attorney absolutely owns the screen when he appears, but he doesn't appear until late in the show, and then too briefly. Dianne Wiest does a guest-star gig in the last quarter-hour that amounts to only a few lines of dialogue. Are acting jobs so scarce that fine actors like these (and Jamey Sheridan, as the captain of the squad) have to take such itsy bit parts?
Although "Criminal Intent" airs at 9 o'clock, it contains a good deal of 10 o'clock dialogue, including graphic sexual references and threehorrible murders within the first six minutes. The show is part of NBC's new brutal and bloodthirsty Sunday-night lineup, a gambit that would be unwelcome at any time but perhaps especially now.
If we must have such shows as "Criminal Intent," however, Wolf is clearly the man to do them. The plot of the premiere could easily be expanded into a feature-length movie, but Wolf's thing is compression. Thus, what you get is Condensed Cream of Crime -- and an hour of cracklingly tense TV.
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