Review by C.J. Bunce
Wow. If you show a photograph to anyone of The Penguin from this year’s new Max streaming series based on the ages-old Batman villain, nobody could guess who was behind the makeup. If you watch him in action, you’d swear it was Robert De Niro doing an Al Pacino impersonation. But Colin Farrell? Doing all of that quirky dialogue, with that New York accent, all that dark mob drama, and keeping up the Bat-villain’s trademark waddle? Last year’s nominee for the Best Actor Oscar for The Banshees of Inisherin, Farrell is long past due for some acting accolades. If The Penguin was a movie, Farrell might have cinched the Oscar this year.
But what’s with all the shows with the supervillain in the hero spot?
The series itself is a mix of good and bad ideas. The best is new villain’s villain Sofia Falcone, pulled into the live-action stories from the Batman: The Long Halloween comic book. She is played by Cristin Milioti (The Resort, Black Mirror, The Sopranos), who plays the character of The Hangman more like Sofia Coppola in The Godfather 3 than James Caan’s Sonny Corleone in The Godfather (the inspiration for the character in the original). The worst change from the comics is that this Sofia Falcone wasn’t the killer (although she tries to catch up). No–she was framed, taking away much of the exciting character creation of the opening episodes. Milioti, along with most of the cast, brings in all the Italian, Mafia tropes and tics from American cinema, from The Godfather to Goodfellas. But is there much new here? Ultimately her character is stuck–she’s the villain in a story where another villain is supposed to be the hero. Unfortunately The Penguin is neither a good villain nor a hero.
One good feature is Rhenzy Feliz (Runaways, Teen Wolf) as Victor, a young man left homeless, devastated by the off-screen backstory bombing by The Riddler that destroyed a chunk of Gotham. Victor becomes underling for Farrell’s character, Oswald “Oz” Cobb (a switch from the historical character name Oswald Cobblepot). The parallels to Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta’s characters in Goodfellas and Al Pacino and Johnny Depp’s characters in Donnie Brasco are nicely done. Victor gets in deep in the criminal life, and fast. But like Tulsa King’s co-star, Jay Will’s young padawan Tyson, he doesn’t understand his role in the story.
But what’s the point without the superheroes to counter-balance the villainy? Behind every Batman story is the theme: Crime Does Not Pay. That doctrine is non-existent in the series. So the show is more for fans of mob dramas than superhero tales. And even there it doesn’t work as well as it could. It gets too muddled in real-life issues that take away any fun that might be brewing here with a subplot about The Penguin’s mother’s illness taking over. The business of drugs became the snoozefest plot point that dragged down some of this year’s very best series–add to Tulsa King the otherwise brilliant The Gentlemen, for starters and it just seems like Hollywood is returning to old 1980s plots for story ideas. Mob stories can be fun, just look at The Untouchables with Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery, or The Freshman with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando. This is not that.
As for the acting? Fans of mob shows and even DC Comics who aren’t from the younger set might want to show up to enjoy watching Farrell do something with the character that is new and fresh. Not since Burgess Meredith first played the character in the 1960s TV series has any actor made that character his own (Danny DeVito’s take seemed more of a parody). Half of the credit, of course, goes to the makeup/prosthetics team, who hid Farrell in the role. The show’s cringe factor is one that was baked into the character itself long ago–this is another disfigured villain of the Bond villain variety. Or was it? See Burgess Meredith’s interpretation. He didn’t need that element to be successful.
Wasted in the series is the great genre actor Clancy Brown (Starship Troopers, Daredevil, Sleepy Hollow, Star Wars: Rebels), who is relegated to a nondescript rival mob boss. It’s always nice to see Brown in new projects, but he doesn’t get the opportunity to do much here. Also, Mark Strong (Shazam!, Green Lantern, The Kingsman, Sherlock Holmes) is lost in a bit part as Sofia’s father, and Theo Rossi (Luke Cage) is a creepy doctor-turned lover (?) of Sofia–another good performer who should be headlining a series like this by now. These roles were not strong enough for this cast.
Somehow this series is supposed to be a spinoff of the Matt Reeves movie The Batman, the one starring Robert Pattinson. How it’s a spinoff isn’t made clear, other than via art direction and a few name drops. It seems more a part of the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movies. Otherwise it’s the same Gotham we’ve seen in the movies and other DC Comics series this century.
Wicked, Cruella, Maleficent, Joker, Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey–why does Hollywood think we need to feel sympathy for villains? No villain is apparently safe–Terminator 2 made Arnold Schwarzenegger’s monster a nice guy, and George Lucas took one of fiction’s best villains and made him a cute little kid.
Again, it’s a mixed bag. Quality acting meets tired plots from four decades ago. The final episode may have the worst decisions of any episode of TV this year. Will Hollywood and comic publishers ever get beyond the darkness and mucky worlds of Alan Moore and Frank Miller, of everyone trying to remake the world of The Dark Knight Returns? Can we get back to the fun DC Comics superheroes before Moore and Miller? All eight episodes of The Penguin are now streaming on Max.
