OLD-SCHOOL INTRIGUE WITH A TWIST
Colin Farrell gives a sensitively layered performance as a private eye in ‘Sugar’, a pitch-perfect neo-noir with more turns than an LA mountain road
If you’re a devotee of the classic hard-boiled detective movies of post-war Hollywood’s Golden Age, then you’ll instantly recognise Colin Farrell’s John Sugar, the determined, enigmatic hero at the centre of screenwriter Mark Protosevich’s anachronistic LA neo-noir set in the present day.
Sugar wears a suit everywhere he goes, is only ever seen driving in his beloved classic Corvette, and has an obsession with certain cases that his boss at the mysterious detective agency he works for keeps imploring him to bring under control.
Sugar has one other constant in his work — his determination to avoid violence by any means necessary — not because he’s incapable of dealing with a bit of rough or meting it out, but because it goes against his principles and has consequences for himself and others he doesn’t like to think about.
All of this referential character creation has a source and, of course, as with so many things in the City of Angels, it’s the movies, in particular the film noir classics that have made John Sugar the out-oftime character he is.
When he’s not running about the world finding missing people, Sugar can be found in the dark of a classic-film cinema watching Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Glenn Ford and their iconic gumshoes going about their gritty, determined onscreen business.
It seems perfectly acceptable that the case forming the basis of his first season journey is liberally and unapologetically ripped straight from the classic Raymond Chandler adaptation, The Big Sleep, starring Bogart.
A famous, ailing Hollywood film director, Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell), hires Sugar to help him find his wayward but beloved granddaughter, sending the righteous private detective on a red herring-filled journey full of intrigue with more turns than an LA mountain road.
As he’s led ever further into shadowy secrets and unwelcome revelations, the persona he’s created in homage to his screen heroes is put to the ultimate test.
It will also place him increasingly under the suspicion of his fellow detectives at the agency.
Though its plot points and key characters are all liberally and openly drawn from the long history of film noir, Protosevich’s script does something different to the high postmodern referential comic high jinks of something like Shane Black’s 2005 noir caper, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Sugar’s simulation noir life has, as its source, something stranger and more unexpected, and its revelation, late into the series, will either have you impressed with its imaginative choice or deeply irritated by a trick that may be too out-of-left field for some.
On the way to that point, however, there’s plenty of film-lover fanboy enjoyment to be had, thanks to a sensitively layered performance from Farrell and some subtly intelligent direction care of Brazilian master Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) who emphasises the deeper themes about violence, shame and the depressing inevitability of complicity in a world that Sugar vainly strives to change rather than become part of, to mostly intriguing effect.
By the time the big reveal comes and everything begins to crash down about Sugar, the stage has been set for a possible second season that would probably be a very different show to the one we’ve just seen.
Even without that guarantee though, Sugar manages to offer plenty to ponder as a portrait of a man struggling to bring something of the “grace under pressure” he’s taken away from his film heroes into a world that proves itself unwelcoming and indifferent to the on-screen fantasies of yesteryear.
In his elegant suit, classic sports car and pacifist-first moral code, John Sugar may seem like a man out of time, but he’s also a creation of the place he finds himself in whose ultimate depressing realisation may be that he can’t escape the realities of his environment, no matter how hard he tries.
Stay for Farrell and the pitchperfect atmosphere and, if you can take the implications of what’s one of the quirkiest twists in recent series drama, you may find yourself having a surprisingly satisfying noirish, dark, old time. •