TV Show Review: Burn Notice - The Fall of Sam Axe

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Interesting back story for a well loved character

Cons: Less than the show, not like the two hour episode I was expecting

The Bottom Line: 

More predictable

Than the show that inspired

Okay, just not great

"See, the Teenage Thief Girl Agrees with Me."

Since I am a fan of Burn Notice, it was only natural that the mention of a prequel made for TV movie focused on Bruce Campbell's character of Sam Axe would catch my interest.  Fan reaction to the show has been mixed, and I'll be the first to say that the movie does not live up to the show.  While it does have some fun moments, Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe isn't what it could have been.

The story is told in a series of flashbacks as Sam Axe stands before a tribunal to answer questions about what happened during a trip to observe in a South American country.

Sam gets this "plumb" assignment after sleeping with the wrong woman, a woman who is not only married but married to a commanding officer.  The angry husband sends Sam off to observe some friendly to the US rebels who are ready to take out some terrorists.  However, Sam soon begins to suspect that something is wrong and confirms it when he figures out that the rebels are the real terrorists and are planning to blow up a medical clinic and then kill him.

Acting fast, Sam manages to escape, but can he warn the clinic in time?  Will they believe him?  And can Sam escape the real terrorists while keeping all these sick people safe?

Burn Notice combines humor, plenty of action, and suspenseful plots with plenty of twists and turns.  The movie feels like a watered down version of that.  The humor especially is lacking.  Sam is the master of wise cracks, but here he gets very few of them in.  In fact, the funniest scene is the one with the cameo of Jeffrey Donovan's Michael Westen from the TV series.  None of the new characters have the spunk to give back to Sam what he gives to them.

If you're looking for things to go boom, there is plenty of that.  The action is as good as on the show; I certainly wasn't disappointed.

But I'm also about the plot that holds the action together.  Again, the show falters here.  Instead of surprising twists, the plot points were fairly predictable.  I definitely got caught up in the action, but I knew what the next complication would be well before it happened.  It just missed the great plotting of the show.

Likewise, the characters were pretty much stock characters.  They fair even worse than the guest stars on the weekly TV show.  With two hours and only one character from the show, I was expecting more.  Again, it's not that they are bad, just predictable.

I will definitely say this for the actors, they don't disappoint.  I can't point to a bad performance in the bunch.

I already mentioned Jeffrey Donovan's cameo early in the movie.  There's another very direct tie in to the show late in the movie as we see the origin of Sam's favorite alias.  That was a very fun moment.

In the end, Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe turns out to be just average.  Fans of the show will still enjoy it since it gives us some fun back story.  But they can't go into it expecting a two hour episode of the show.