A DEAL with THE DEVIL
Taron Egerton stars as a gangster offered the chance to walk out of jail – but only if he can get a serial killer to confess. So first he must strike…
Could you endure sidling up to a figure of pure evil, in a place where your life was at risk night after night – even if the reward was being given your freedom?
That is the extraordinary proposition facing convicted drug dealer Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton, above) in a dark but utterly enthralling six-part US true-crime drama.
Once a high-school football star, Jimmy has failed to fulfil the hopes of his retired policeman father James (the late Ray Liotta, above right) and instead hits the big time in crime – only to be caught and sentenced to ten years in jail. He’s in despair, until an FBI investigator, Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi, above left), comes to him with a mind-blowing proposition. She wants Jimmy to agree to be relocated to a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane so that he can buddy up there with a suspected serial killer, Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser).
Believed to have murdered more than a dozen young girls, Hall is likely to be released on appeal – unless Jimmy can manipulate him into confessing where he’s buried the bodies of his victims.
Perhaps it’s not exactly an alluring invitation, and Jimmy hits back: ‘So you want me to check in to hell, cosy up to a f***ing demon and ask him all casual, “Hey, so where did you bury 13 bodies?” Not for all the money in the world.’
But then the FBI agent offers him the clincher: ‘How about freedom?’ So the stage is set for Jimmy to take up the challenge in a dangerous game in which liberty or death may be the only outcomes.
Adapted by master thriller writer Dennis Lehane from Keene’s 2010 memoir In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, And A Dangerous Bargain For Redemption, Black Bird is a riveting examination of pure evil in the grand tradition of The Silence Of The Lambs and Manhunter.
Having won a large fan following in the Kingsman films and enjoyed critical acclaim as Elton John in Rocket Man, British screen star Egerton demonstrates his brilliant versatility with his utterly convincing portrayal of an American gangster.
Hauser is deeply unsettling in his all too convincing depiction of the twisted Hall, and is joined in the cast by the ever dependable Greg Kinnear playing a police detective.
But this is also the showcase for a haunting performance by Liotta, displaying superb artistry in one of his most emotive roles, as a heartbroken father hoping only that before he dies he can see his son free once more.