Comic-book stuff, serious impact
“Luke Cage” is a comicbook series for people who don’t necessarily like comicbook series.
Spinning off of “Jessica Jones,” “Luke Cage” is a decent urban crime and justice drama whose hero just happens to have some superpowers. The series becomes available for streaming on Netflix on Friday, Sept. 30.
Mike Colter completely owns the title character, a brooding ex-con whose heart is still broken from the loss of his wife and who just wants to disappear into the woodwork for now. He’s got two jobs, one of which is washing dishes at a swanky club owned by local crime boss Cornell Stokes (Mahershala Ali), who gets very angry when people call him
by his childhood nickname, Cottonmouth.
Luke also sweeps up hair at a Harlem barbershop run by a beloved neighborhood figure named Pops (Frankie Faison), a reformed gangster who now tries to keep young neighborhood kids from making the same mistakes he made as a kid when he trucked around with Cornell.
Luke tries not to get involved with anything or anyone. Pops suggests he’s grieved long enough and maybe it’s time to meet other women, but Luke can’t imagine anyone taking his late wife’s place. A lot of bad stuff happens at Cottonmouth’s club, the Paradise, but Luke just looks the other way.
He has adjusted to having superpowers — superhuman strength and skin that can’t be broken by knives, bullets or fists — but overall, they are just a burden, as heavy as the feeling of loss he carries with him every day. Even if Luke doesn’t know it yet, we do: Things will happen that will force him to get involved on the side of right.
We’ve seen this setup before in countless comic books and comic-book film and TV adaptations. Takes a while for the trigger to be pulled, but that just gives series creator Cheo Hodari Coker time to develop the characters — not just Luke, but also a smart police detective named Misty Knight (Simone Missick), corrupt city Councilwoman Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard), and a ruthless ex-con named “Shades” Alvarez (Theo Rossi) whom Luke knows from the joint.
By the time Luke finally unleashes his powers to go up against Cottonmouth, it almost feels like a letdown, because we’re so invested in Luke’s character we don’t really want the show’s dramatic base mucked up by a bunch of comic-book stuff.
Colter proves tough enough to take it, though. Just as his character’s skin is unbreakable, Colter’s performance is more than strong enough to keep the focus on Luke Cage. The performance is so powerful we don’t even care that the basic plot has been recycled from hundreds of comic books.
The rest of the cast delivers as well. Ali makes Cottonmouth far more than just a one-dimensional gangster. He is ruthless and cold-blooded, but he also has a sense of obligation to Pops from when they ran in the same gang. Ali and Missick inhabit their characters so fully, they may be ready for their own spinoffs down the road.
Luke can’t fly or turn himself into a human icicle or tornado. He “just” has strength and an impenetrable skin. But his heart is not impenetrable, and that grounds “Luke Cage” in something very real and credible in the comic-book TV genre.