‘The Penguin’ Review: Cristin Milioti Steals HBO’s All-too-familiar Spinoff ‘The Batman’ Right Out of Colin Farrell’s Mouth

I’m not saying HBO’s The Penguin it’s derivative, but it’s the second TV show in less than six months in which Colin Farrell plays a character with Old Hollywood black-and-white film glamor — specifically using clips from Gilda to evoke nostalgia for a time our hero is too young to experience firsthand, a poignant longing for a world of mysticism and morality that no longer exists.

Built into the semi-recent series of origin stories for classic TV and movie villains – Norman Bates, the Joker, half of Disney’s nefarious catalog – is an indictment of an unsympathetic audience.

These revisionist approaches to iconic stories assume that, while using audiences to root for figures traditionally coded as “heroes,” they have failed to acknowledge that their horror is rooted in the conditions of the -human even by the seemingly worst: loneliness. , trauma, treatable mental illness, hatred of Dalmatians.

It’s a subgenre that says, “Behind the story you know is this story you’ve never thought about,” a visible revelation that opens up whole new avenues that keep us reliving the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents ad infinitum.

The Penguin is another result from Matt Reeves The Batmanan already ground-level approach to DC Comics lore that introduced us to Farrell, who is completely unrecognizable beneath layers of prosthetics, as a nightclub owner and a second-rate warrior. Here’s the thing: You present the Penguin to me as a stunted, fish-swallowing freak with an ill-fitting tuxedo and skin so pale it’s almost translucent, and I’ll happily ask, “Tell me more.” Offer me Penguin who is a husky, underrated mobster with a lack of hygiene motivated by an unhealthy attachment to a mother who coddles him with one hand and emasculates him with the other, and my first reaction is, “Yes, I saw The Sopranos before.”

Creator Lauren LeFranc (Chuck) have reimagined Oswald Cobb — the “-lepot” must have been dropped on Ellis Island — not as a colorful and profound figure in need of complex explanation, but as a TV anti-hero like the 00s, who can be expressed because he has characteristics every viewer will relate to, but because we have been associated with characters like him on television for 25 years.

No wonder this latest piece of Batman-without-Batman fabulism – see Joker, Gothamsome CW series and Pennyworth: Batman’s Butler Origins — is less interesting when it focuses on its title character. He finds much more intrigue in Sofia Falcone, played by Cristin Milioti in the show’s signature performance.

The action picks up after the events of Conradh na Gaeilge The Batmanspecifically destroying Gotham’s seawall and flooding the city. Carmine Falcone (Mark Strong in flashbacks) is dead and Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown) is in prison, so there’s a power vacuum in Gotham’s criminal vacuum.

Alberto (Michael Zegen), Carmine’s son, may be ready to get high, but he’s an addict – “drops” is Gotham’s drug of choice. For the purposes of our story, Alberto has too little respect for Oswald, who has made great promises to his estranged mother (Deirdre O’Connell) and to the lady of the night (Oíche Carmen Ejogo) who loves him. Oz is looked up to by everyone and some mockingly call him “The Penguin” because of a waddle from a badly managed clubfoot, but he finds a new acolyte in Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), an abandoned teenage orphan from Gotham’s lower-income neighborhood. in ruins after the flood.

The only person who feels what Oswald could be capable of is Sofia, a serial killer also known as The Hangman, who has just been released from the overcrowded Arkham Asylum after ten years. Sofia and her former chauffeur Oz have a dark past, and things threaten to get even darker in the present as they join Game of Thrones – especially since Robert Pattinson’s Batman is nowhere to be seen not to mention.

Although Gotham is itself a bleak urban space, not quite New York City but essentially New York City, its entire universe casts a bleak mirror on 21st-century America on the brink of class uprising. The town’s working-class citizens are sick of being neglected and left in helpless chaos. His ethnic crime enclaves are fed up with him in the shadow of Falcone/Maroni. All of Gotham’s institutions are poisoned and in the pocket of the top one percent, which would normally include at least Bruce Wayne, but see above.

Although The Penguin makes obvious references to gangster classics such as The Father and White Heatand although it left me thinking at different points half a dozen different HBO titles in the sopranos However, it reminded me as often of the wishes in the prestige space, as Ozark or Low Winter Sun. It’s probably the least you’ll compare it to The Batmanwhich is by design. There are shipping franchise receipts that don’t even really count as Easter eggs, a determined ethos that stands…until it doesn’t anymore.

The story is an accelerated clash that runs three or four plot seasons in these eight episodes. In the end, it’s just various bad guys making similarly violent power plays, where alliances are made but then broken too quickly for any pleasure in even the most fruitful character interactions. Just like most shows of this type, it treats us to cycles of colorful threats, sadistic torture, predictable stakes and subsequent body disposals, delivered with professional polish but not enough creativity.

It may be the biggest question anyone will have about it The Penguin is whether Farrell’s prosthesis is working as a full meal after the amuse-beak of The Batman. In that regard, The Penguin It really is a qualified victory. The make-up effects, designed by Mike Marino, stand up under long exposures and even in the brightest lighting. Oz’s resemblance to Colin Farrell can only be seen occasionally, but this is not one of those prosthetic jobs that renders the person unable to express emotion through the layers of rubber. The character is allowed to be awkward and infuriated and even, although perhaps enough, funny and eccentric.

Farrell’s eyes are always visible and expressive, hinting at the wounded soul behind a vicious, unyielding monster. Playing Tony winner O’Connell, who treats Ma Penguin like a Eugene O’Neill figure, and Feliz, who offers elements of decency in a world where it’s rare, Farrell reveals a slightly softer Penguin.

The “qualification” for the win is that a lot of effort and even innovation has gone into turning a handsome, professional movie star into a … character actor. I’ve never shaken the feeling that this could be a breakout opportunity for someone like Eric Lange, Pruitt Taylor Vince or John Carroll Lynch, passing the savings on prosthetics to David Zaslav. Instead, the exaggerated James Gandolfini cosplay is an opportunity for Farrell to be effective, right down to certain moments when the taste similarities become jarring.

Oz is clearly capable of carrying this story, but not in a fresh way. That’s why it’s likely that attention will shift to Sofia Milioti, a character whose presence comes with less baggage from the comics. Sofia is treated more like a Cruella/Maleficent woman whose dark path is set by the assumptions and constraints of patriarchy. Featuring the best examples of the series’ costume design, Milioti makes Sofia more believable than Oz as a tragic victim and the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with Gotham, a figure you can both feel sad and scared for along the way same. The hand in hand The dynamic between the two creates a masterpiece for Milioti and Farrell, but the audience will be left wanting for climaxes far too soon.

The rushed nature of the plot means that many of the higher-profile supporting actors – Ejogo, Brown, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Theo Rossi – are underserved. The same is really true of Gotham, with the locations and production design shining in some episodes, but getting lost in the narrative arc of others. The murky and gloomy visual style established in the first three chapters, directed by Craig Zobel and shot by Darran Tiernan, usually becomes smoother as the season progresses.

The Penguin it takes a place in the middle of the ground for a subgenre that I can’t completely dismiss, because it comes from time to time Bates Motel or even a Perry Mason (HBO version), among too many entries that are never needed. But if the answer to the question is, “How did Character X get to be the way he was?” is, “Well, have you seen …” then you haven’t thought far enough outside the box.