4 out of 5

Created by: Frank Darabont

‘Mob City’ is another confirmation of Darabont’s polished grasp on storytelling, pacing, and, in general, cinema.  Various descriptions have described this as a love note to noir, but that only applies in the same sense that Walking Dead is a love note to horror; that is – not really.  I think Darabont just sees a good tale and pitches it in the right context.  For WD, that means gore and thrills, and for Mob City, that means a gangster period piece.  The design and dialogue comes with that.  It would seem odd without it.  Add this to Darabont’s penchant for a lack of character subtlety – yes, our lead, detective Joe Teague (Jon Bernthal) is a moral grey and this is a genre nod, but this isn’t used to affect an overall tone or move us, emotionally, as ‘Mob’ reveals itself to be more of a fictionalized document of an real event as opposed to a character drama and the rest of the characters are stock Black or White cops or robbers, sadistic, selfish, heroic, etc. etc.

And that story ‘reveal’ is probably what keeps ‘Mob City’ from scoring perfect.  It’s eminently watchable – seductive, really, with just the right balance of slick production design and heavy shadows to keep things dour but not robbing the proceedings their sense of inertia – but Darabont’s 6-episode arc (with writing from Michael Sloane, David J. Schow and David Leslie Johnson as well, all based on ‘L.A. Noir’ by John Buntin) moves elements around on the screen more for their ‘this looks good’ effect than having a sensible place in the tale.  Thus the focus seems to bop around for a bit – and again, it’s never unpleasant, you’re just uncertain where your attentions should settle – until the pieces are finally in place and characters can reference those odd elements (‘oh, that’s the only reason that scene was necessary’) and Buntin’s book or Darabont’s scripting team can pull back the curtain on the birth of IA, or the death of Benny Siegel.  But what of Police Chief William Parker, with Neal McDonough finally – god bless him – getting to play a straight up good guy (as far as we’re shown, anyway) – or Bernthal’s failed relationship with Jasmine Fontaine (Alexa Davalos), whose photos set off the whole con that’s our entry point to this world?  …Mickey Cohen (Jeremy Luke), since Mob City is supposed to be just as much about his rise to prominence as anything else?

Well, all of those elements are in there.  They’re not even shoved in there: everyone gets fair screen time, and the 40s slang has never sounded so naturalistic from a full crew.  Which is what I come back to as the prime achievement here – that this was prime cinematic entertainment.  And it was a great story, regardless of how much of it was true or based on truth.  Yes, there are certainly faults, and it lacks a ‘hook’ common to modern television, perhaps owing to why this was compressed into three 2-hour sagas instead of getting a full season (if that was ever on the table), but Frank took the time and resources he had and turned in a stunning project that can school ‘Boardwalk’ on how to do mobsters without all the profane effuse.

(I haven’t seen ‘Boardwalk,’ so yes, I’m just talking shit based on assumptions.  We’ll return to this once I’ve watched the show, either to dance victoriously or to shiv my past self and then drink my aged blood in order to gain my past knowledge and thus re-instill this mindset in my then-present self and establish a loop wherein I have to keep rewatching ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and rereading this review.)