RIZZUTO TV SERIES DEBUTS
Montreal is the scene of the crime
The TV series opens with a spectacular shot of the Champlain Bridge with traffic flowing smoothly into our glorious city. OK, so this non-gridlock aspect of the new six-part series Bad Blood is clearly fictional, but the balance … maybe not so much.
Montreal is the backdrop for our very own take on The Sopranos, with a tinge of The Godfather and Goodfellas tossed in for good measure. But whether the focus be on good or bad guys, Montrealers — who often possess a twisted notion of civic pride — tend to get a kick out of seeing famed native sons and daughters on screen. And that’s precisely what we have here.
Bad Blood, which debuted Thursday on City TV, is inspired by “reputed mobster” — according to the production notes
— Vito Rizzuto as well as the best-selling opus Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War, by Antonio Nicaso and Peter Edwards.
Much plasma will be spilled and many craniums will be crushed over the course of this series, but based on the opening episode, this will have local crime caper-loving audiences hooked from the get-go. We’ll even overlook the fact that much of the series is shot in … Sudbury — actually, one of the hotter film centres in the land now — but there are still enough local focal points to sustain our interest. And, certainly, the plot line couldn’t get any more local.
The narration accompanying the opening shots of the bridge points out that Montreal is a major port of entry — for visiting containers of cocaine and heroin.
The camera soon pans to the Big O — circa 1996 — where one Vito Rizzuto (played by Anthony LaPaglia) has gathered leaders of the city’s various crime organizations together for an inspirational spiel on his economic philosophy. Not quite John Maynard Keynes, but effective nonetheless.
Vito notes that his family and many others profited from the building of the Olympic Stadium. You know, cost overruns. Vito’s point is that peace among rivals will bring all a nice piece of the drug pie.
Vito has taken over the family business from his pop, Nico Sr. (Paul Sorvino). Vito is old school, but he has a vision of one day turning ill-gotten gains into legitimate enterprises to be run by his bright-eyed, earnest son Nico Jr. (Brett Donahue).
Vito implores the others that they have to conduct their businesses with a modicum of civility, lest they end up in the jug or dead. He also informs them that there can only be one CEO now and that’s him, because he has the cops and city hall in his pocket.
And for nearly 10 years, there is peace of sorts and life is good and payoffs are plentiful. But as one of Vito’s cronies puts it: “Gangsters can be petty assholes who will always screw up.”
Sure enough, a couple of punks try to take Vito out, and all heck busts loose.
“We respect tradition and family,” Vito tells Nico Jr. “We have honour. But there will always be punks who haven’t evolved.”
Which explains why Vito desperately wants to disassociate himself from the rackets and clean up his act.
Alas, Vito can’t escape his past. He is extradited to the U.S. on racketeering charges relating to the deaths of three crime capos in New York — despite the fact that he wasn’t the killer.
And so the scene is set for control of his empire in the episodes to come.
LaPaglia talks the right talk and brings the necessary smarts and menace to the part and will probably evoke more memories of Marlon Brando’s Godfather than James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano. No questioning his acting chops, although Vito Rizzuto might not have been overly amused with the casting. He more resembled a dashing Robert Mitchum type than the lumpy LaPaglia.
Sorvino is solid as avuncular Nico Sr., while Donahue fits the bill as eager offspring Nico Jr.
But most convincing of the bunch is Kim Coates as Vito’s sinister right-hand man Declan Gardiner, an Irishman who, in spite of his ethnicity, has worked his way to the top of the Rizzuto organization — much to the consternation of Nico Jr.
A most prescient fellow Declan is, particularly after learning that Vito is being dispatched to the slammer: “The shit is about to hit the fan, the walls, the whole damn house.”
That it will. Much blood and guts, too. Consider yourselves warned.
The six-part series Bad Blood airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on City TV.