Monday, September 20, 2010
Recap City / Television "Boardwalk Empire," Season 1, Episode 1
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 6:11 PM
- Courtesy of HBO
- THE NAME 'NUCKY' WILL SWEEP THE NATION: Steve Buscemi in "Boardwalk Empire"
First, in his high-colored shirts and dapper suits, with pinstripes or huge checks, Buscemi looks exactly like the kind of person you’d see in silent newsreels of ribbon-cuttings and other civic events from a Ken Burns documentary. In “Boardwalk Empire’s” crooked context, at times he favors a Dick Tracy villain who’d have a name like “Snitchy.” In fact, Winter bases the role on a real person, city treasurer Enoch Johnson, a central figure of Nelson Johnson’s book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City.
In part, the pilot follows Nucky from the New Year’s Eve passage of the Volstead Act, outlawing alcoholic spirits, as he tries to turn Atlantic City into the speakeasy capital of America. Nucky quickly establishes himself as a classic political figure, the kind of “fixer” in the background who makes the trains run on time, and in films, usually serves as sidekick or sounding board to a more charismatic and reckless (anti)hero. Buscemi proves equally persuasive while milking the sympathies of the ladies at the Temperance Union and then profanely joshing around in smoke-filled rooms with Atlantic City ward bosses.
As he flits from mortuary-basement moonshiners to dockside bootleggers to casino high-rollers, Nucky seems like the craftiest guy in town, with both a vision and the command of detail to bring it to fruition. “We got a product a fella’s gotta have. Even better, we gotta product he’s not allowed to have,” he explains. Compared to his political buddies, he’s the sole B’rer Fox in town full of B’rer Bears. He even has a protégé in Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), a troubled World War I veteran and family man who chafes at his lack of opportunities.
Nucky has more depths than one might guess. When he first meets Mrs. Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), he put on his public face but genuinely listens to her dignified plea to help her husband find a job — he shows more cool and presence than Buscemi usually has the opportunity to convey. Buscemi and Scorsese score with two quiet moments that mirror each other even more than the more typical gangster fare. In one moment, he looks in the window of an “Incubators” store, where the signage proclaims, with carnival-worthy ballyhoo, “See babies that weigh less than three pounds!” and “Some of These Days” warbles on the background. Near the end, he looks through a fortune teller’s window, bearing the words “What Does The Future Hold For You?” The palm reader meets his gaze with an expression that would answer that question, “Your future ain’t good.” Nucky clearly craves family and worries that riding high may mean riding the whirlwind.
Prohibition brings heat to Atlantic City, in both positive and negative senses of the word. The most formidable Arnold Rothstein, whom Michael Stuhlbarg (unrecognizable from his nebbishy turn in A Serious Man) mesmerizingly plays as the most commanding figure of the New York mob. Jimmy chats up one of the mob drivers, another young vet (Stephen Graham), and wonders, at the fortunes of Rothstein's torpedo, “Lucky” Luciano: “A half a million bucks, can you imagine that? What is he, like our age?” Jimmy’s cheerful, huggable pal turns out to be Al Capone, in one of the greatest examples of historical name-dropping I’ve ever seen in a period piece. Jimmy and Al’s ambition will explode in Nucky’s face when they rob a whiskey shipment intended for Rothstein. Meanwhile Scorsese seems to love Frank Crudele's plummy turn as “Big Jim” Colosimo, an old-school mobster (what Mario Puzo would call a "Mustache Pete") pushed out of the way by the young turks.
In a show filled with intimidating gangsters (including a cameo from “The Wire’s” Michael K. Williams as Atlantic City’s African-American mob boss), none proves more terrifying than Michael Shannon’s Agent Nelson Van Alden, perhaps the most menacing Fed in gangster film history. “It’s a godly pursuit,” he intones of law enforcement while looming Frankenstein-like over Jimmy during one confrontation. I wondered if the Fed would use Jimmy’s disaffection to turn him against Nucky, but instead Jimmy’s ambitions lead him down a bloodier path.
“Boardwalk Empire” delivers crisp, shocking scenes of mob hits and similar violence, but doesn’t stray very far from the conventions of such gangland portrayals as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America and “The Sopranos.” Images like the full-frontal dead woman on the funeral home slab try a little too hard to impress the audience with the character's callousness. Certainly the show can do better than lines like “First rule of politics — never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” And though the sets and locations are gorgeous, they can look a little too clean and underpopulated in some scenes. The working class rowhouses appear practically idyllic.
“Boardwalk Empire’s” oddest detail must be the make-up and headwear of Kelly Macdonald, who sports a false pointed nose, with her face frequently framed by the arch of her severely-curving hat brim. Based on the pilot, she might as well be named Mrs. Downtrodden, as the face of early 20th century female victimization, but here, like her climatic scene in No Country For Old Men, she can face corruption without losing her integrity. And even if her look proves nearly as exaggerated as that stylized comedian with the Kabuki-white make-up, she definitely looks like another figure from a vintage newsreel. From that perspective, she and Nucky were made for each other.
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