Monday, Bloody Monday
February 23, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
I imagine the Hollywood pitch for "The Black Donnellys" went like this: "It's a fast-paced 'Sopranos' starring a Clearasil-young cast, and people die constantly." That doesn't sound tasty, but this stew is fresher and pinker than your usual mobster meat.
What is it with the traditions of the media-made mafia, anyway? Theirs is a world without Wal-Mart. Everything's family owned. Bars. Diners. Neuroses. Psychoses. Grief, guilt, glory.
The Donnellys are weighed by all that. They're four twentysomething brothers growing up brownstone in Hell's Kitchen, New York. They are not black but black Irish. They run a bar where the window glints green from a neon four-leaf clover.
They also kidnap people and chop them to chunks of red. They're no nicer than the dystopian punks of "A Clockwork Orange." They just don't dress as cool.
Like a musical boy band of yore, there's the leader, the good-looking one, the disturbed one and the slacker. These Irish kids get in trouble fast with Italian mobsters, then the show is off and running as a panoply of purple bruisings.
The second episode concerns getting rid of a body. This entails conversations about how to dispose of the corpse. (Bathtub of acid? Dump it in a landfill?)
Then, one Donnelly brother strips to his Marky Marks so he can, with his six-pack of abs (rippling), smash the dead man's body parts to a pulp with a blood-splattering sledgehammer; in the background, the music score pulses a nifty, contemporary lounge vibe.
Yes, it's half-glamorization of violence and half-judgmentalism, just like in "The Sopranos."
The co-creators of this white-hot heat are Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco. Together and individually, they produced, wrote or directed "Crash," the 2004 best picture winner/after-school special, and "Million Dollar Baby," the Oscar-winning bore.
Given free rein to make TV (notably on NBC, lowly rated and willing to take chances), Haggis and Moresco toy with a freer style. It's a cinematic swirl of novelistic time warps and despicable characters. Can they keep it up?
The whole show is a series of flashbacks narrated by Joey, a friend of the Donnellys. He is telling these stories from jail as a sort of hyperactive yellow canary, chirping to cops and cellmates.
Joey is erratic and self-aggrandizing. Thus, storylines are confusing at times. Unlike the pop cops at the Conveyor Belt System (CBS), the Donnellys give you no time to stroll from the TV and miss scenes. Miss a minute, miss a lot.
These tall tales flow into a stream of consciousness. That's good. The acting is convincing. That's good. The Irish stuff is heavy-handed. That's bad.
The third episode begins with a screen quote by Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart."
I thought to feel blue from being beat down was to be Jewish, black or, really, any heritage, but whatever. The Irish are always presented like this -- doomy, gloomy yet sprightly and crooked-smiley from hops and barley. (If I were aggressively Irish, I'd sue that little Notre Dame gremlin mascot for merrily perpetuating stupid fists and a nerd beard.)
In the first episode, Joey narrates: "The Irish have always been victims of a negative stereotype. I mean, people think we're all drunks and brawlers -- and sometimes that gets you so mad, all you want to is get drunk and punch somebody."
Right. Crazy murderous Irish drunks bound together by spite and passion. That's not a promising Hollywood pitch, either, but Haggis and Moresco make it work through sheer will power and storytelling skills, just like any scrappy Irishman would.
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
I imagine the Hollywood pitch for "The Black Donnellys" went like this: "It's a fast-paced 'Sopranos' starring a Clearasil-young cast, and people die constantly." That doesn't sound tasty, but this stew is fresher and pinker than your usual mobster meat.
What is it with the traditions of the media-made mafia, anyway? Theirs is a world without Wal-Mart. Everything's family owned. Bars. Diners. Neuroses. Psychoses. Grief, guilt, glory.
The Donnellys are weighed by all that. They're four twentysomething brothers growing up brownstone in Hell's Kitchen, New York. They are not black but black Irish. They run a bar where the window glints green from a neon four-leaf clover.
They also kidnap people and chop them to chunks of red. They're no nicer than the dystopian punks of "A Clockwork Orange." They just don't dress as cool.
Like a musical boy band of yore, there's the leader, the good-looking one, the disturbed one and the slacker. These Irish kids get in trouble fast with Italian mobsters, then the show is off and running as a panoply of purple bruisings.
The second episode concerns getting rid of a body. This entails conversations about how to dispose of the corpse. (Bathtub of acid? Dump it in a landfill?)
Then, one Donnelly brother strips to his Marky Marks so he can, with his six-pack of abs (rippling), smash the dead man's body parts to a pulp with a blood-splattering sledgehammer; in the background, the music score pulses a nifty, contemporary lounge vibe.
Yes, it's half-glamorization of violence and half-judgmentalism, just like in "The Sopranos."
The co-creators of this white-hot heat are Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco. Together and individually, they produced, wrote or directed "Crash," the 2004 best picture winner/after-school special, and "Million Dollar Baby," the Oscar-winning bore.
Given free rein to make TV (notably on NBC, lowly rated and willing to take chances), Haggis and Moresco toy with a freer style. It's a cinematic swirl of novelistic time warps and despicable characters. Can they keep it up?
The whole show is a series of flashbacks narrated by Joey, a friend of the Donnellys. He is telling these stories from jail as a sort of hyperactive yellow canary, chirping to cops and cellmates.
Joey is erratic and self-aggrandizing. Thus, storylines are confusing at times. Unlike the pop cops at the Conveyor Belt System (CBS), the Donnellys give you no time to stroll from the TV and miss scenes. Miss a minute, miss a lot.
These tall tales flow into a stream of consciousness. That's good. The acting is convincing. That's good. The Irish stuff is heavy-handed. That's bad.
The third episode begins with a screen quote by Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart."
I thought to feel blue from being beat down was to be Jewish, black or, really, any heritage, but whatever. The Irish are always presented like this -- doomy, gloomy yet sprightly and crooked-smiley from hops and barley. (If I were aggressively Irish, I'd sue that little Notre Dame gremlin mascot for merrily perpetuating stupid fists and a nerd beard.)
In the first episode, Joey narrates: "The Irish have always been victims of a negative stereotype. I mean, people think we're all drunks and brawlers -- and sometimes that gets you so mad, all you want to is get drunk and punch somebody."
Right. Crazy murderous Irish drunks bound together by spite and passion. That's not a promising Hollywood pitch, either, but Haggis and Moresco make it work through sheer will power and storytelling skills, just like any scrappy Irishman would.
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