Mark Ruffalo is a celebrated, veteran actor who has been nominated four times for the Oscar. He's been up for all other major awards, including a Grammy and a Tony Award. However, his wins have come from his work on television. He won the Emmy Award twice. Once was for The Normal Heart (2014) and the other was for I Know This Much Is True (2020). Both were HBO projects. Because of that success, it makes sense for Ruffalo to return to HBO for yet another.
Brad Ingelsby is a screenwriter whose debut feature script was The Dynamiter (2013), which was one of my favorite films the year it was released. He's written over a half-dozen features that have been produced. He didn't start getting accolades until he wrote and produced HBO's Mare of Easttown (2021). That series was nominated for 16 Emmy Awards. It won four, including three for acting. Ingelsby's show was basically a gritty cop drama that focused on a single mom, struggling with domestic issues, while investigating a murder in an impoverished area, just outside Philadelphia, which is Inglesby's home city.
Ruffalo stars as Tom Brandis, a FBI agent who lives outside Philly. He's a single father whose children are mostly grown. He has one adult daughter who has her own home and family. However, Tom has two teenage children who still lives with him. In Mare of Easttown, the protagonist was single due to divorce. Here, Tom is single due to death. His wife was in fact killed. Most shows might be about Tom trying to find his wife's killer, but this show reveals who killed Tom's wife pretty early. Tom's wife was killed by Tom's son, his adopted son.
Yet, that's not the main story. It could've been. There's enough material there to fill out a four-episode, limited series, exploring the lead up, the aftermath and what we see here, the family reckoning with what can be called matricide. Nonetheless, this story of inter-familial murder is simply the B or C-story. The A-story involves Tom having to put together a task-force or a group of FBI agents to investigate a series of robberies of drug houses or trap houses, which becomes an amazing story in itself.
Tom Pelphrey (A Man in Full and Ozark) co-stars as Robbie Prendergrast, a man who also lives outside Philly. He's also a single father. Like Tom Brandis, Robbie is dealing with a loss in the family, a death in the family and in fact a murder in the family. Robbie's brother was killed. Robbie loved his brother, and he knows who killed his sibling. Robbie wants revenge, and the way he goes about it is by robbing those aforementioned trap houses. The reason is because the person who killed Robbie's brother was a drug dealer who was in charge of those trap houses.
Yes, the A-story is about Tom chasing after Robbie and his crew, as they commit these thefts. Robbie's revenge has things go wrong and unintended consequences. It becomes a thriller that is very intriguing and compelling. Even if the FBI was taken out of the narrative, the fallout of Robbie's road to revenge is powerful alone. It all becomes an allegory about the need for forgiveness, which is an important tenet in Christianity, and it's not coincidental that Tom reveals that he's a former chaplain and his religion is still important to him. The series could also be about greed, another of the Seven Deadly Sins. The poverty for these characters is real and many of them are desperate to get out, which isn't greed but from the drug dealers to those who go after their money, greed becomes a factor.
Emilia Jones (CODA and Locke & Key) also co-stars as Maeve Prendergrast, the niece to Tom. Tom's brother who was murdered is Maeve's father. Obviously, she would love revenge against the man who did it, but she's focused on surviving in this impoverished setting, not only taking care of herself but taking care of Tom's kids who need her because Tom is too busy on his revenge track. Unfortunately, she gets pulled into Tom's revenge scheme and it becomes about her having to navigate the fallout without going to jail or getting killed herself. Jones is brilliant here.
The rest of the ensemble cast is amazing. Each person was perfectly picked. There are essentially two groups of people. The law enforcement side is one, and the law-breaking side is the other. It's a large cast, but every one is spot on. Arguably, the cast for the law-breakers was stronger or more interesting than the cast for the law-enforcers. This is purposeful because we ultimately end up spending more time with the law-breakers than the law-enforcers.
Raúl Castillo (Seven Seconds and Looking) is one such example. He plays Cliff Broward, a guy who works for the government as a garbage man. He's on the back of the garbage truck. He's also the best friend of Tom and his brother. He's a working-class guy who lives a very impoverished life and dreams of wealth and a better existence. Because he loved Tom's brother as he loves Tom, Cliff is willing to go along with Tom's revenge.
Sam Keeley (Joe vs. Carole) plays Jayson Wilkes, one of the aforementioned, drug dealers who's part of a gang called the Dark Hearts. His trap houses are the ones being robbed. Robbie, Cliff and their crew are targeting those trap houses. One reason is because Robbie's brother used to be a member of the Dark Hearts, a motorcycle gang, a biker club. Because Robbie's brother was a member that gave Robbie insight into their operations and where potential trap houses were. Jayson doesn't really know too much about Robbie, so he never suspects him. Jayson is too busy with rising up the ranks in the Dark Hearts, per the tutelage of his surrogate father, Perry, played by Jamie McShane (Wednesday and Sons of Anarchy) who raised Jayson to be this tough, cold, brutally masculine person.
There's so many great people in this ensemble, too many to name. However, in terms of the cast on the law-enforcers side, there's several that need to be spotlighted. One of which is Martha Plimpton (The Real O'Neals and Raising Hope) who plays Kathleen McGinty, the boss to Tom who gives him grief every time he comes to her for help. Plimpton is probably known for her comedic roles, even in serious dramas. She can't help but bring some humor and levity to the dark stuff in this series, especially one that has so many people reckoning with death and revenge. Thuso Mbedu (The Woman King and The Underground Railroad) plays Aleah Clinton, one of the FBI agents assigned to Tom's task-force. She's a no-nonsense, Black woman who gets wind that something might not be right within the task-force itself, meaning there might be a mole or a spy, leaking information to the Dark Hearts. Given that the Dark Hearts is a white supremacist group, it's obvious that it's not her. However, the other two members of the task-force are white. They are Anthony Grasso, played by Fabien Frankel, and Lizzie Stover, played by Alison Oliver (The Order and Saltburn). Those two have a bit of romance that gets complicated by the fact that one of them might be a mole or a rat.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 7 eps.
Available on HBO Max.
