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Although it starts out on a glib, dopey note--as "Mission: Preposterous" crossed with "Ocean's Eleven"--the new TNT series Leverage develops with surprising swiftness into a decent, watchable action drama about wrongs being righted and bad guys getting what's coming to them. Leverage isn’t quite as effortlessly intoxicating--it must make do with the dependable but suave-challenged Timothy Hutton--but when it works, the TNT series has a rascally tingle. The secret to the show’s success is not any of the overly familiar parts, but the nutty way Leverage throws them together. Also, Hutton is a great actor who generates plenty of crackle between Nate and his fellow fleecers. Leverage's pilot is particularly entertaining. The cast is fine, direction is expert, writing above average, and Hutton's Ford is almost convincing. But the payoff feels laden with cheese of another sort. So far, though, it keeps the techno-babble to a manageable level, and if it seems to owe more to other movies and shows than it does to real life, at least it's paying its debt in an entertaining fashion.g its debt in an entertaining fashion. Though the pace is zippy and a fair amount of the dialogue is snappy, Hutton brings a distracted, melancholy air to the proceedings, which doesn’t slow things down -- his nuanced performance keeps the show on an even keel.
excerpt from metacritic.com
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