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Ozark (2017)
If reason doesn't work, try force.
Netflix's Ozark's premise is as simple as its theme - crime pays until it doesn't.
Financial adviser Marty Byrde and his partner have a nice little second income - laundering money for a drug cartel. His partner gets crazy handling all this money and decides the cartel won't miss a few million - it's the kind of idea that leads to the cemetery. Meanwhile, his wife is about to leave him for greener pastures but her lover gets dead. The cartel is about to kill everybody when Marty talks them into letting them live to launder another 5 million. For reasons you won't remember, the financial advisor has to take his family to the Ozarks to make this happen.
I was never a Jason Bateman fan - he has over 90 acting credits on IMDB and only Arrested Development stands out. I have changed my opinion. Bateman is excellent as said financial advisor, Marty Byrde. Now, he has a lot of good company, namely his wife, Wendy, played by the amazing Laura Linney, his daughter played by exotic-looking newcomer Sofia Hublitz, his employee, Ruth, by the explosive Julia Garner and his boss' boots-on-the-ground representative, Helen, by the ever-threatening Janet McTeer.
The first two seasons have the usual mix of very good plot lines, stories and episodes, but nothing that is out of the ordinary in this new Golden Age of TV. Then, this week, season three was released on Netflix and bam! Ozark has set itself apart with excellent writing.
Mr. and Mrs. Byrde have strongly opposed ideas on the best way to extricate themselves and family from the clutches of a homicidal, maniacal Mexican drug lord - is there any other type?
They bought a casino since casino ownership is Money Laundering 101. Mr. Byrde wants to sit tight, do the laundering and hope somehow they get an opportunity to fly - yeah like a bird. Mrs. Byrde, on the other hand, wants to expand and buy more casinos and in the words of Michael Corleone, go legitimate in the next few years. She reasons that casinos make tons of money (unless your name is Donald Trump) legitimately so eventually they can be 'safe.'
Meanwhile, Wendy's long lost brother, Ben ( Tom Pelphrey) shows up. He's wanted in another state and is somewhat annoying as he goes through various convulsions when he discovers what his sister and her husband are up to. But he is a little crazy - I mean certified - so he falls for Ruth and starts creating havoc wherever he goes. Ben is bi-polar and Ozark is excellent at portraying the problems of dealing with a person you love who is mentally ill. The main problem and what makes mental illness a most insidious disease is that the person who has it denies having it and often refuses all help or treatment.
Meanwhile Helen is involved in a custody battle with her ex over their only child, Erin (Madison Thompson). There's a baby who is being cared for by the poster mother of deranged moms played perfectly by Lisa Emery. Wendy wants custody of that child - it's a long story - and what Wendy wants, she usually gets.
The theme of the season is summed up by the drug lord. He gets enthusiastic about the idea of making money at a second casino and gives Wendy the OK to buy it. When the owners refuse to accept her very generous offer, she explains to Mister Drug Lord that they are acting unreasonably and he offers this piece of advice - if reason doesn't work, try force.
Season 3 of Ozark pits the Byrdes against each other as each of them makes a bid to control their lives. They have to make very difficult choices and the complications of their lives comes close to mirroring the problems of life itself. And isn't that the hope of all dramatists - to write to a story that has some of the complications that real life has? Ozark does that - and it's not pretty, but very, very real.
Reprisal (2019)
Is it binge-worthy?
REPRISAL by Armen Pandola
Binging TV series has introduced us to a new phenomenon - the moving on decision. Say a series is ten episodes long. You have watched the first episode and it seems like the kind of TV series you like. So, on to episode number two. You like two, but not as much as you thought you would. Maybe it gets better. Episode three is good, better than two but not as good as one. So, you try one more - episode four. That is the key episode. If you go on to episode five, you have gone past the point of no return. Five episodes and you are stuck - you have to go on.
Reprisal got me to episode five and I was stuck. I went with it to the end, but every episode was a decision - to go or stay. There was just enough glitz and shine to keep me from turning it off before the next episode flashed on, automatically - it was a decision made for me rather than an affirmative action on my part. And Hulu knew enough to start the next episode off in mid-action rather than with credits - I may have turned it off if the credits came first.
Hulu's Reprisal has an excellent cast. Abigail Spencer is Katherine Harlow / Doris Quinn, a woman who is part of a criminal gang, but has been tortured and thought killed by her brother, Burt (Rory Cochrane). As they say when Hamlet thinks of killing his usurper/step-father near the beginning of the play - if he does, there is no play, And so Katherine is not dead but returns as Doris to get revenge.
She picks up a pair of uber-thieves, Earl (Craig tate) and Cordell (Wavyy Jonez) and concocts a scheme to rob the gang's front, a strip club called Bang-a-rang, owned by Burt. She cons a young man, Ethan Hart (Mena Massoud) into infiltrating the gang. Queenie (Lea DeLaria) runs the place and is a kind of den mother to the strippers who work there, one of whom is Burt's daughter, Meredith Harlow (Madison Davenport). Ron Perlman shows up at the beginning and end of the series as a mob boss and does his usual excellent job of looking bad, yet sounding reasonable.
There's a lot of blood and beatings that would put The Rock in traction for a month, but, in Reprisal, turn out to be scratches that barely make a mark on the victims. I don't know about you, but these phony violent scenes are getting old. Hollywood has come 360 degrees - at the birth of talkies in the early 1930s, Hollywood set up a 'code' that didn't allow for the victims of violence to bleed. For the next 40 years or so, characters died from gunshot wounds and beatings that left no wounds, no blood. Then, Sam Peckinpah and others brought blood back to the screen. Now, we have gallons of blood and dozens of wounds, but no real injury. Somebody gets pummeled in the face with too many punches to count and the next minute is fine.
After watching this series, I read what its makers said it was about since I couldn't make out any theme:
"At its core (Reprisal) is about family. A family that seeks to destroy each other," executive producer Warren Littlefield claims. "And the family that you build in order to survive and thrive. There will be themes that will be recognizable. It's quite universal, actually."
And the NY Times offers this: "If you like the combination of violent action, sentimental fantasy, literary pretension and periodic slapstick humor that Reprisal offers, you may enjoy it well enough."
In the end, Reprisal is a mish-mash with cell phones and pay phones and 1950s cars, 1980s hot pants and contemporary music. There is something for everyone and enough to keep you clicking to the end, but that's about it. Like Rocky, Reprisal goes the distance, but barely.