REVIEW: Boardwalk Empire

Created by Terence Winter

With: Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Kelly Macdonald.

With ‘Mad Men’ season 4 over and the new one still in the works, I felt in need of a good period drama TV series that was both intelligent and soulful. Enter ‘Boardwalk Empire’, a new HBO creation, much praised by the American and British critics alike, produced by Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg and showered with Golden Globes. It premiered in America last September and is currently playing on Sky Atlantic in the UK.

The pilot episode was clearly designed to establish the show as the new cool kid on the block, something to be reckoned with. It is supposedly the most expensive TV pilot ever produced, which can be seen from the astounding attention to detail, the beautiful costumes and a sure-hand direction by Scorsese. The story is set in the year 1920 in Atlantic City, during the prohibition era and just before the emergence of the mythical criminal lords like Al Capone and his likes. The main character is Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, based on the actual Enoch Johnson, an elected treasurer of the city and an underground criminal. He is played by Steve Buscemi, who, at first, seemed like a peculiar choice to play someone assertive and controlling, considering his many previous roles as a feeble sidekick. However, I now think that this was a perfect casting decision as Buscemi manages to give a certain mercurial quality to Nucky, which absolutely fits in with his nature: Nucky is someone who enjoys the lavish lifestyle his illegal actions (mainly bootlegging) provide him with but he also loves the power of a politician and basks in the glory of a supposed do-gooder. He is someone who is constantly torn by his opposing impulses and is a real chameleon.

Nucky is supported by his driver Jimmy, played by Michael Pitt, whose previous films include Bertolucci’s ‘The Dreamers” and a re-make of “Funny Games”. Jimmy suffers from post-traumatic disorder as he recently came back from WWI. His angelic features disguise his disturbed character and his love for brutality leads Nucky deeper into the criminal world.

This is no ordinary gangsters’ tale. Although there is a fair bit of violence and hedonism on show, there are also some interesting character observations and for me “Broadwalk Empire” is a wonderful keyhole into America’s past. The protagonists encounter some historical figures and ordinary folk, whose authenticity might be questioned by historians, but they look and sound like real people of flesh and blood, much more real than the sepia-coloured photos of the time. The set for the series was especially built, so the houses and the streets of old Atlanta look very believable. The city is, of course, an important character for the show – it used to be the Las Vegas of its day, with burlesque shows, illegal alcohol, nightclubs, gambling and loose women, which is very much interwoven into the series’ plot.

Overall, “Boardwalk Empire” is a curious and high-quality piece of work. There are some clear parallels with “The Sopranos”, which is a definite compliment. It is well written, well acted and directed and is a feast for the eyes. Every character seems to have a secret; nothing is what it seems to be. Do not be alarmed by the pilot’s dense plot, however – I think they just tried to put too much information into one episode in order to catch the viewers’ attention. If you feel like you’d like some procrastination that wouldn’t be totally meaningless, by all means, watch this. It doesn’t beat “Mad Men” for me, but then I am just shallow and would watch Jon Hamm instead of Steve Buscemi even if he were in a loo paper ad.

REVIEW: Limitless

Dir.: Neil Burger

With: Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro.

Bradley Cooper has a lot riding on this film. “Limitless” is essentially his first foray into the Hollywood A-list leading-man territory. It is his first attempt at showing that he can be more than the likable but jerky boy-man we’ve grown accustomed to from “The Hangover” and “The Wedding Crashers”. He also gets his first executive producer credits here, which makes many aspects of this thriller oh-so more understandable. Basically, a lot of first-times for Mr Cooper, an eloquent, Georgetown-educated Italian-Irish American and an ex-Discovery Channel presenter.

He has clearly picked out his first big film very carefully – “Limitless” sounds great on paper – an unsuccessful and depressed writer tries a new drug that enables him to use his entire brain’s potential but doesn’t ask himself what its side effects are. I don’t know what the budget was for this, but it was obviously very high, the movie looks robust, slick and, well, expensive. And judging by the creative adverts that appeared on the London tube prior to the film’s premiere, someone has put much thought into its promotion. It is a huge shame that the good things about it end here. The plot is literally all over the place, certain subplots are never concluded or explained and some characters pop in and out of it without much logic behind their appearances. The film is full of clichés, there are scenes in it where you’d think the supporting cast must have all come out from a ‘Sylvester Stallone acting school’ – yes, their attempts at portraying credible emotions are that bad. It has the makings of a good film that tried to do too much and went off the rails towards the end.

Robert De Niro’s casting in "Limitless" seems like a calculated ploy to get more audiences into the cinemas, he hasn’t much onscreen time and when he does, he doesn’t really do much but frown and look at his phone/watch/Bradley Cooper. However, in my opinion, Bradley Cooper has shown that he can carry off a film on his own, the mixture of his quite handsome but also strange looks makes him appealing and entertaining to watch and gives him the airs of being just above the average. His character teeters on the brink of being likable and dislikeable and Cooper has achieved this quite well. There is one scene in particular where he contemplates drinking someone’s blood (no, I definitely wasn’t watching Twilight) in order to stay alive and there is something really animalistic, desperate and quite revolting written in his otherwise groomed face and creepily azure eyes.

At the same time, "Limitless" does manage to address some interesting themes. It draws a picture of a modern world where people in developed countries are given many opportunities to excel, but the way they use these opportunities makes them none the wiser; the protagonist’s shallowness and the previously-unknown greed manifest themselves in his first actions post pill-taking; he gets a haircut, new wardrobe and works out at the gym. As if a person who really did become thousands times more intelligent would really care about what his abs looked like. His so-called newly acquired cultural tastes are used purely to get more beautiful women in bed. His girlfriend, who was supposed to be the good moral person in the film, disappointingly ends up going back to the perfected, albeit freakishly confident and calculating version of him. Neither he nor she can resist the glossy life his unreliable new skillz have presented them with and it really does not say much good about the couple. The ending of the film just confirms the bleak and cynical view on modern values as perceived by the makers of the movie.

And to end this, how it all began – Bradley Cooper, the actor-student, asks Sean Penn a question Inside the Actor’s Studio.