Tigers X - Number one Source to Talk Auburn Tigers Sports
The Library => Broun Hall => Topic started by: Kaos on May 11, 2025, 04:47:28 PM
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Streaming on Paramount
I'm a sucker for mob movies/shows if they're done well. This one? It is.
Mobland follows the Harringtons, a British mob family who end up at war with the rival Stevenson family over something (fentanyl, I think) but there are other things that precipitate it.
Pierce Brosnan is really good as Conrad, the lecherous patriarch of the Harrington family. Helen Mirren is his equal as the scheming (maybe?) and duplicitous (perhaps?) Maeve, matriarch of the clan. I'm not typically a fan of Tom Hardy's work, but he's pretty solid here too - without any ridiculous affected accent - as Harry, the Harrington's heavy-handed fixer.
It borrows from The Sopranos. It borrows from Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas, Brotherhood, Peaky Blinders, and Boardwalk Empire. But it doesn't borrow from any of them in a deriviative way. It just repurposes little pieces of things and parts of characters that work. There are elements of Tony Soprano in Harry, slivers of Livia in Maeve, drops of Junior in Conrad, and nudges of Carmella in Harry's wife Jan. Harry and Jan's daughter has a touch of Meadow in her too. But it's not so much that it's overbearing.
It also swipes from Game of Thrones in presenting the most detestable, punchable-faced kid who would be king Eddie, the grandson of Conrad. He's the smarmiest worm this side of Joffrey Baratheon Lannister.
The story starts with a bang - literally - but it takes a little bit to put all the pieces together. Seven episodes in and there are still people (Maeve in particular) playing angles I haven't quite figured out yet.
I like Tulsa King. This is way better than King in every way. It's well scripted, well acted, well filmed. It's a little dark (and I mean that in two ways - brutal and the lighting is dim/gray-blue which I guess is what I think England should be).
It's not Sopranos - nothing is. But it's still a pretty good watch. No, it's better than pretty good. Curious to see where it goes.
I heard this was originally intended to be a prequel to the Ray Donovan series but that idea was scrapped early on and it became its own separate entity. Glad for that. I never watched Ray Donoval and likely wouldn't have picked this up if that's what it was.