DEFENDING JACOB
Evans’ own sequel to The Raid, Berandal.
Fortunately, all this familiarity largely feels welcome, close to comforting, even (though that is not really a word you’d use for much of what happens here). Evans and Flannery’s regard for the American way brings to the fore the immigrant experience, making their setting a searing, post-imperial melting pot, rather than a monochromatic Cockney scrum. “A city of closed doors brought us together,” eulogises Ed at Finn Wallace’s funeral, referring to the “No Blacks, No Irish” racism of the ’70s. He (Black) and Finn (Irish) were bonded and hardened by their otherness: “illegitimate bastard children of the great British Empire” who have now become masters of its financial and criminal quarters.
Where Gangs Of London makes its biggest mark, however, is in an area that will surprise nobody who’s seen The Raid or its sequel. Having made their name in the Indonesian film industry, Evans and Flannery now import their own brand of hyper-kinetic, unflinchingly ferocious screen violence to the streets of our capital, with each episode featuring at least one virtuoso action sequence (even after Evans hands the directing reins to Corin Hardy, who in the fourth episode shows he’s as adept at action as he is horror).
There is, admittedly, a level of casual sadism on display which may prove a little too gruelling for some viewers, whether it’s one man tortured to death on a giant hotplate, or another buried alive in building-foundation concrete. But we’re watching bad people do bad things, and it’s all handled soberly, never played for laughs. Plus, when it comes to the action, which mostly revolves around Dirisu’s regularly battered trouble-magnet Elliot, Evans/flannery’s approach can only be applauded for its freshness in this drizzly context, and for its sheer, pugilistic inventiveness. The first episode’s pub brawl and subsequent chase sequence is a handsdown showstopper, with some astonishing “ooh, that’s GOTTA hurt” moments involving the use of a dart as a deadly weapon, Flannery’s camera pivoting and whirling without ever shying away from the bonecrunching, flesh-scraping detail. A later duel in a grotty tenement with a meat-cleaverwielding thug, meanwhile, offers up several pause-rewind-replay beats in just a few intense minutes.
So while the drama itself sticks to a well-trodden path, it’s fair to say that, when it comes to the action, the British gangster thriller has never fackin’ seen anything like this before.
A stylish, homebrewed gang drama that takes its cues from the American classics, while bringing all the full-on, close-combat hurt you’d expect from the makers of The Raid.
★★★ OUT / EPISODES VIEWED
Mark Bomback Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Jaeden Martell
Assistant DA Andy Barber (Evans) is assigned to a murder investigation, and discovers that the victim is a classmate of his son Jacob (Martell). When Jacob becomes the chief suspect in the crime investigation, the lives of Andy and his wife Laurie (Dockery) are thrown into chaos.
APPLE TV’S STRATEGY of hiring very big names and placing them in proven genre fare continues, after The Morning Show and Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, with this sombre, almost Scandi, crime drama starring Chris Evans. Written by Outlaw King’s Mark Bomback and directed by Headhunters’ Morten Tyldum, it’s not a cheery or uplifting tale, but thanks to a slow build it feels frighteningly realistic and almost unbearably tense as it turns the screws on its central family.
Evans is Andy Barber, a prosecutor and rising star in his well-heeled community, who is naturally assigned to the high-profile case of a 14-year-old murder victim after a body is found in the woods. Andy is disturbed but not deterred to learn that the victim, Ben, was a classmate of his son Jacob (It’s Jaeden Martell), but he’s astounded when some in the school accuse Jacob of the murder. Soon he and wife Laurie (Michelle Dockery) become town pariahs alongside their son when he is arrested, and Andy refocuses all his legal know-how into proving his son’s innocence.
The vision of a family locked down in their own house and shunned by their neighbours will seem far more timely than showrunner Bomback could have guessed when this went into production, but this small group are also under siege by the media and rejected by everyone who should be Skyping with them. Worse are the cracks that appear in their picture-perfect façade. It turns out that Andy has hidden secrets about his past from Laurie and Jacob, and that Jacob has been hiding activities from both parents. The big question is whether this is a clearing-your-name situation, where dogged investigation might save the wrongly accused party, or more of a We Need To Talk About Kevin, where Jacob really has done something dreadful. Martell walks a line between creepiness and normal teenage sullenness that leaves it open, so the drama’s more in how others react to him.
Dockery gives a fine, nervy performance as Laurie begins to seriously question both her son’s innocence and her husband’s insistence that everything will come right in the end. But the focus is Evans, as a guy determined to almost bend reality to his will in order to get back to the perfect life he had before. He’s smart and capable and knows when to recruit outside help to clear Jacob’s name — but there’s a lurking sense that he may be reliant on a giant blind spot where his family are concerned. He may, in fact, be forcing himself and his family to conform to a blithely successful stereotype they no longer fit, testing his own sanity in the process as the gap between reality and his hard-won normality gapes wider and wider.
The sheer intimacy of this — we almost never leave the family — makes it an uneasy watch, because you can’t help but get caught up in their predicament. They may be more privileged and far more beautiful than the rest of us, yet the nightmare of dangerous secrets coming to life could threaten any family. Still, while the washedout blue and grey cinematography recalls Gone Girl and the theme is faintly reminiscent of House Of Cards, this doesn’t have quite that bite or those twists. It’s more of a character piece, a story about three lives in ruins, and how little we know even those closest to us.
It’s almost relentlessly downbeat and perhaps undercooks the mystery angle, but as a portrait of a family fracturing under immense pressure, it’s a heartbreaker.