TV Reviews : NBC’s ‘Revolver’ Misfires in Spain

“Revolver” (at 9 p.m. Sunday on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39) is that common type of action movie, often involving drugs and international smuggling, in which you find yourself plodding through such a thicket of convoluted plotting that the experience is vaguely exhausting.

To compound the matter, too many characters, mostly actors from Spain (the movie was shot entirely on location in Barcelona) who speak in fuzzy accents. The compensating factor, nominally speaking, is the flavor of Barcelona. And it’s a commentary on the show that, as your eye sweeps over the boulevards and into the Picasso Museum, you’re pondering not whether star Robert Urich will catch the terrorist who shot him and put him in a wheelchair but rather the Olympic athletes who will crowd these streets this summer.

While Barcelona is captured evocatively by director Gary Nelson, the movie’s other singular pleasure is the pair of Spanish actresses who lead Urich by the nose (Assumpta Serna and Ariadna Gil Giner).

Endemic to the form, characterization is not a major player in the movie. You have colorful characters, like David Ryall’s drug lord and Jordi Molla’s affable sidekick, but not people. Urich, of course, does this sort of thing with off-hand ease. Somewhat like David Janssen--but without Janssen’s great, world-weary touch--Urich’s got a natural face for television, if little style.

The story’s most involving element actually is Urich’s relationship to his wheelchair, which is a positive commentary on behalf of the handicapped by the writers and co-executive producers, Rift Fournier and Mark Waxman.