Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonny☼LA
Wow - an hour and a half into Mob City on TNT tonight and I'm pretty sure it's the best noir I've seen since LA Confidential. I kind of live under a rock when it comes to TV and I'm glad I saw the NY Times ad this morning.
Some pretty excellent locations and a much more serious tone and rhythm than that pretty but totally empty Gangster Squad. Looks equally expensive. The Times said "Mr. Darabont (Shawshank Redemption), rather than fiddling with the noir formula as that movie did, settles for executing it expertly." I like the casting too, some familiar faces but lots of generally noirish characters. Ed Burns is on all the ads but I like the other guy better, Jon Bernthal - a bit like a young Fred Ward, maybe?
Anyway, it's three parts, 2 hours each I think - the next three Wednesdays at 9.
Edit: Okay, after the first night, I still say better than Gangster Squad but that isn't saying much. I'll just modify my judgement to say the "...the best noir I've seen on TV since Twin Peaks."
I just love that they got a Mickey who looks like Mickey, unlike the psycho genius played by Sean Penn. |
Where is Roman Polanski when you need him?
I was surprised to see that there was no more commentary here on "Mob City" today...and then I sat down to watch it on DVR, and perhaps now understand the silence. Reviews in the NY Times and elsewhere seemed to be positive, claiming the show to be superior to
Gangster Squad (which would hardly seem difficult) and even somehow closer in quality to
Chinatown—an absurd notion. Aside from the huge number of commercials, annoying even when easily fast-forwarded through on DVR, "Mob City" starts off dully and darkly—in an inauthentic backlot New York. There is very little to suggest Los Angeles...at some point there are more street scenes, these supposedly in L.A., that look like the same NY backlot sets, with Eastern urban basement row housing, vaguely set off by a neon sign reading "Los Angeles Hotel." The vaguest attempt was made to have City Hall appear under construction in a scene marked "1927", but the thing just never seemed to take hold, and seems full of clichés—nightclub singers by the dozen, for one thing. Not a single thing to suggest Los Angeles, 1947. The art director is completely clueless.