David Morse - Brotherhood of the Rose

St. Louis Post-Dispatch January 22, 1989

January 22, 1989, SUNDAY, LATE FIVE STAR Edition
SECTION: TV MAGAZINE; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 734 words

After 'Saint'Hood

BYLINE: Jay Bobbin Of Tribune TV Log

As Jack Morrison on St. Elsewhere, David Morse certainly had his share of troubles, but his newest role affords him different ones, at least. After gaining wide recognition as the doctor whose personal problems never stopped mounting on the acclaimed and now-defunct hospital drama, the actor assumes the guise of an endangered CIA agent in Brotherhood of the Rose, NBC's new suspense-drama based on the best-selling novel by First Blood author David Morrell. Part 1 will be seen on Sunday immediately after the Super Bowl; Part 2 airs at 8 p.m. Monday on Channel 5.

Morse and miniseries veteran Peter Strauss play near-fraternal espionage veterans who are reunited when each is linked to separate sets of murders, setting up both of them as targets for immediate elimination by fellow agents. Robert Mitchum plays the agency's deputy director, who trained the two men to be efficient and effective assassins, and Hotel alumna Connie Sellecca is featured as a helpful Israeli intelligence officer who also is the Strauss character's ex-lover.

Morse promises that fans of such melodramas as Three Days of the Condor (filmed in 1975, with Robert Redford as an agent on the run) should be ''pretty delighted'' with Brotherhood of the Rose, since he says that the stories have a good deal in common. ''One of the things I like most about this one,'' the softspoken Morse says, ''is that it's not only an adventure in a very exciting way, but it also has genuinely human characters. That's what made it really appealing to me.''

While Morse says that his character is quite distinct from the man played by Strauss, they do share certain factors. ''With both of them,'' he explains, ''everything has been kept pretty much under the surface. My character is something like a forest that has been growing under concrete, then the concrete suddenly just breaks away and this jungle suddenly appears.

''These men have been brought up to be super-assassins who don't have feelings, but human beings basically can't go on that way, so something has to crack - and these guys do.''

Drawing a delination between St. Elsewhere's Morrison and his Brotherhood role of Chris Kilmoonie (whose code name is ''Remus''), Morse says, ''The thing about Morrison is that all of his sensitivity and emotion was out front, and he had no reason to hide it. He found no value in doing that, and circumstances sure brought those traits out of him. ''With Chris, though, he was brought up his entire life not to show any of that stuff. He actually got to a point where he couldn't live with that any more and just 'fell out,' going into a monastery where his feelings became so strong, the Church couldn't deal with it and he was asked to leave. In some ways Chris is a departure (from Morrison), but in other ways he's not, because these are both people with a lot going on inside.''

GRAPHIC: Photo; PHOTO HEADSHOT of David Morse

LOAD-DATE: October 23, 1993