UNBOUND

Invincible New York attorney Stone Barrington (Quick & Dirty, 2017, etc.) is shoved to the sidelines by even more formidable ex–CIA agent Teddy Fay, now operating under the names Billy Barnett when he’s producing films for Centurion Studios and Ted Shirley when he’s seeking full-throated revenge.

Whatever impulses toward social compliance may have survived Teddy’s checkered earlier adventures (Smooth Operator, with Parnell Hall, 2017, etc.) are instantly killed off when he’s widowed by the wife of dislikable Hollywood producer Dax Baxter, who runs over Teddy’s own wife after a “three-cosmo lunch” and then retreats into a private clinic to escape prosecution. Asking his boss, Stone’s son Peter, for a leave of absence, Teddy drives to Santa Fe, where, as Ted Shirley, he gets himself hired on Baxter’s latest shoot. Sensing danger, Baxter hires Russian assassin Dimitri Kasov to neutralize Teddy, but he’s no more successful than Baxter’s own bodyguards were. When Teddy, unmasked but undimmed in his resolve, heads back to Los Angeles with Sally Ryder, whom he’s picked up at the shoot, in tow, Baxter redoubles his efforts to have him killed. Despite Teddy’s well-honed survival skills, all might be lost if it weren’t for the timely intervention of Sgt. Carlos Rivera, who works the auto theft detail for the Beverly Hills PD. Carlos gets into the middle of this battle royal in a most unlikely way, but once he’s established himself firmly there, fans will recognize that there’s no hope for Baxter or anyone he hires in the high-fatality rounds that follow.

As uncertain in its pacing and structure as a Road Runner cartoon—you just never know who’ll be abruptly discarded and who’ll turn out to matter in the Woods world—and equally formulaic in the conduct of individual episodes and the final outcome.