Apple TV’s Dope Thief, an eight-episode adaptation of Dennis Tafoya’s Philadelphia-set crime novel of the identical title, is bracingly chaotic, a lot of its motion perpetrated within the warmth of the second or by outright accident. On the identical time, it’s one other unlucky instance of streaming bloat. The sequence is exceptionally well-made, however it by no means enables you to lose sight of the tighter, extra economical story that would have been.
The present’s kinetic, nerve-jangling first episode, which was directed by Ridley Scott, follows Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura) as they do what they do greatest: posing as DEA brokers and shaking down low-level drug sellers. It’s a variety of danger for somewhat payoff, however they rationalize their work as a type of public good for instructing these sellers they’re not invincible.
Violence in Dope Thief is stunning and transient, from singed corpses to a person being squashed between an alley wall and an oncoming truck. Throughout its lived-in units and thru its punchy dialogue, the sequence is alive to all of its characters’ screw-ups, like when Ray yells at Manny for getting the ground of their getaway automobile moist as a result of he hosed water via the bullet holes.
When Ray and Manny defuse a state of affairs involving a younger boy brandishing a firearm, Ray notes that precise feds would have shot the child—and he’s in all probability proper. Ray specifically is a talker, crediting the practiced authority of his “command voice” with the success of their raids, and Henry is magnetic and humorous because the motor-mouthed character. However quickly sufficient, the pair take issues too far throughout a botched job that not even Ray can discuss their means out of. They find yourself pursued not simply by the true DEA, however a shadowy drug-running alliance represented by a legion of goons and a colourful Bostonian snarl coming from the opposite finish of a radio.
Previous a sure level, although, Dope Thief stops letting its energetic particulars and the colourful performances communicate for themselves, delving into backstories and histories that kill its momentum with out doing a lot to deepen the characters as we already perceive them. It even loses sight of the shadowy conspiracy at play, which finally ends up being so uncomplicated that the writers have little selection however to set it apart till the present’s climax.
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Forged: Brian Tyree Henry, Wagner Moura, Marin Eire, Kate Mulgrew, Ving Rhames Community: Apple TV+
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