[Ben Lahnger]

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I've been hooked by the Thursday night CBS series "Person of Interest" starring Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson.

An ex-CIA hitman and a scientist team up to prevent crimes before they happen.

Executive Produced by J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions and created/written by Jonathan Nolan (brother and creative collaborator of Christopher Nolan), this gritty bit of techy-detective-actioner is centered around the "Carnivore" software program the U.S. government is rumored to have deployed that monitors all email and electronic correspondence for terrorist-related key words.

Emerson plays haunted genius Harold Finch who developed the program but became concerned about the way the government was going to use the software (and more importantly, not use it ... as in not using it to prevent so-called "small" crimes like kidnapping or murder. Those were considered a bad use of resources.)

So, as a path to assuaging his own sense of guilt, Finch put a small back door into the program that regularly reports to him the social security number of a person who might be the victim, perpetrator or accomplice in one of these "smaller" crimes. He only gets the social, because any more information leaked might be traceable by the government.

With this little bit of information, he hopes to prevent evil, one deed at a time. But as smart as he is, when it comes to being an agent of force in the field, he knows he is ill equipped. So he recruits Caveizel's character John Reese, an ex-CIA special operations agent, who is haunted by his own personal demons due to his professional past and the death of his girlfriend. A reluctant partner at first, Reese starts to see each social security number, each mission, as a possible road to redemption.

So the two dissimilar men find themselves unlikely partners in a weekly race to find out who is in danger, where the threat comes from and how to stop it.

Finch uses computer technology and the ever present security cameras of our modern society to provide information, and Reese uses his special ops knowledge to protect the victims and disarm the bad guys, sometimes quite violently.

It's a nifty gimmick for a show, and so far the writing has kept it interesting. But what really moves me is the acting of Caviezel and Emerson. They got exactly the right two guys for the roles, and their earnest desire to right some wrongs despite their painfully obvious flaws and personal histories is highly compelling!

So far ... 4.5 stars out of 5.

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