FBI-CIA battles pre-9/11 detailed in uneven series

REVIEW

CLEVELAND — Hulu's "The Looming Tower" charts the dysfunctional relationships in the U.S. intelligence community during the years preceding the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

A sense of "if only" hangs over the 10-part adaptation of Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the FBI and CIA followed the rise of Osama bin Laden.

If only the two organizations could have put personal issues aside and shared information, perhaps 9/11 could have been prevented. Such is the message relentlessly hammered home in "The Looming Tower," at least in the first three episodes made available to critics.

The docudrama begins streaming today on Hulu.

Unfortunately, the writing and direction in the initial three hours suffer from lapses, too — with a strong sense of "if only" hanging over the series, too.

If only so many of the characters didn't come across as cardboard caricatures being awkwardly pushed through the complex web of agendas.

If only the terribly uneven narrative — sometimes brilliant, sometimes banal — were more consistent in bouncing from location to location.

If only we didn't suspect that big chunks of the story (and character motivation) are missing because of rights issues.

As a result, “The Looming Tower" proves to be an erratic study in dysfunction, from the standpoint of both plot and execution.

Jeff Daniels, who seems to show up in a new drama every few months, stars as FBI counterterrorism expert John O'Neill, a hard-charging agent with a gift for making incredibly loyal friends and incredibly resentful enemies. He also has a gift for sabotaging his career.

Although farsighted on many intelligence issues, O'Neill hardly was a saint, and the miniseries doesn't shy from the affairs that created havoc with his personal and professional livies.

Given all of this, you would think the character would be infinitely more intriguing and better developed.

O’Neill’s principal adversary is ever-smirking CIA analyst Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard), portrayed as a onedimensional, cartoonish antagonist. They enviously push and shove over territory, O'Neill blustering and hurling wonderfully obscene insults, Schmidt smirking and doing little else, leaving viewers with slim hope that a real character might eventually show up.

Still, “The Looming Tower’ does have a few outstanding performances.

Two of the best are Tahar Rahim's riveting portrayal of LebaneseAmerican FBI agent Ali Soufan and Bill Camp's splendidly engaging interpretation of veteran agent Robert Chesney. The docudrama jumps to vibrant life whenever they are on the screen.

And there is much to say in the series’ favor. It does, for instance, capture the tragic and haunting notion that political infighting needlessly opened the door for horrific attacks on American soil. The tools were there to prevent it, Wright tells us.

Hulu is billing "The Looming Tower" as a political thriller — which, at times, it is.

At other times, though, it’s tedious.

The series ends up a mixed bag of impressive strengths and frustrating shortcomings — precisely what Wright is telling us about the intelligence community before 9/11.