Tulsa King Review: Bringing Together Crime and Western with The Right Irony | Paramount+
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Vincent Piazza, Jay Will, A.C. Peterson, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Garrett Hedlund, Dana Delany, Annabella Sciorra
Creators: Taylor Sheridan, Terence Winter
Streaming Platform: Paramount+
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
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Two good reasons why it’s worth emphasizing that Tulsa King is available on Paramount+ starting December 25, 2022, then once a week until the grand finale (there are ten in all). The first is that the series, created by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone) and with showrunner Terence Winter, partner of Martin Scorsese and creator of Boardwalk Empire (remember it?), was immediately renewed for a second season. Renewal with the thrill, though. The second reason, more important and more interesting, is that with Tulsa King the format in question welcomes a very special protagonist. He resisted longer than the others, but in the end, even Sylvester Stallone knowingly ended up falling into the (serial) spider’s web. Andrea Savage, Jay Will, Martin Starr, Max Casella and Garrett Hedlund complete the cast.
Except for a few brief appearances on the small screen, Sylvester Stallone had never acted in a television series. To convince “Sly” to take the plunge, it took a proposal signed by an exceptional artistic duo: Taylor Sheridan, creator of Yellowstone and screenwriter of Sicario, and Terence Winter, father of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, as well as Oscar-winning screenplay for The Wolf of Wall Street. The two invited the famous Italian American actor to fulfill a dream of his and take on the role of a gangster for the first time.
Contrary to what one would expect, however, Tulsa King is by no means a noir series set in the past, but an ironic contemporary adventure. Dwight Manfredi, the aspiring “King of Tulsa”, is a criminal of the last generation who finds himself catapulted to the time of Uber and the iPhone, and – a bit like Stallone himself! – He has to fight to keep up with the thousands of novelties of the contemporary world. Overseas, the response was very positive: the first episode beat even the awaited debut of House of the Dragon, and the renewal for a second season has already arrived.
Tulsa King Review: The Story
After serving twenty-five years in prison without ever saying a word that could help incriminate the beloved boss Pete Invernizzi, gangster Dwight Manfredi is now finally free. His sense of honor has remained intact, but the world is no longer the same: the face of New York is completely transfigured, credit cards have replaced cash, Uber has replaced taxis and, in the Invernizzi family Pete’s son Chickie is now running the business. In short, the return home is certainly not what he had imagined: for Dwight, there is no longer a place in the city, despite his sacrifice and his unwavering loyalty. More with the bad guys than with the good, and after throwing one too many punches, Dwight is sent to the rural city of Tulsa, Oklahoma: a remote place and decidedly more “on a human scale” than the chaotic New York, where he will the opportunity to rebuild a criminal empire.
The protagonist quickly embraces the new challenge. From a business point of view, all in all, Tulsa is truly virgin land: crime almost does not exist in Oklahoma, and the only real business is that of weed, sold in the Bodhi shop and purchased from the nearby Indian reservation. And so, flanked by the young taxi driver Tyson and Bodhi himself, Dwight will try to carve out a place in this new world, taking his first steps towards becoming an unlikely “King of Tulsa”. In addition to rebuilding a gangster identity, however, Dwight will also have to deal with the ghosts of the past, after leaving behind an ex-wife and a child who is now an adult. On his way, however, the beautiful Stacy Beale will also appear, recovering from a difficult separation and with a truly unpredictable occupation…
Tulsa King Review and Analysis
From a narrative point of view, Tulsa King is an ensemble show, which gives voice to a plurality of interesting and very well-defined characters. Above all of them, however, shines the bright star of Sylvester “Sly” Stallone, the fulcrum of the story and the undisputed star of the series, who even at the age of 76 confirms himself as nothing short of a formidable performer, with a voice, natural charisma and a truly inimitable stage presence. It matters little if Dwight’s interpreter is today decidedly more bolso, old and weighed down compared to the times of Rocky, Rambo, and Dredd: the role he must interpret is certainly not that of the young lion, but that of the old dinosaur, always reluctant to adapt current affairs and stubbornly determined to make sure that, if anything, the whole world adapts to him.
Already from the first two episodes, we can guess without fear of contradiction how the initial bet was won hands down. Thanks to the excellent writing of Winter and Sheridan, who tailor a truly perfectly tailored suit for Stallone, “Sly” throws himself into the part, enjoys it, and proves to be tremendously at ease in a role that seems already destined to become iconic. Put in these terms it could almost seem like the beginning of a joke, and perhaps, on closer inspection, it is. For Tulsa King, the “crime+western” equation was almost automatic: from The Sopranos to Boardwalk Empire, Terence Winter is synonymous with the mafia, while Taylor Sheridan (who in addition to Yellowstone and its spinoffs is also the creator of Hell or High Water) is the father of a new western imaginary.
Yet, in addition to mob bosses, horses, crime families, and Indian reservations, there is also a lot of irony in the new series with Sylvester Stallone. Tulsa King is certainly not a comedy show, and not even a Fargo-style black comedy, but the tone of the story immediately turns out to be much lighter and more light-hearted than one might have expected. You are warned: from the first episode there is so much to laugh at, and tasteful. Therefore, it is forbidden to expect a contemporary reinterpretation of the Godfather in a western sauce: despite being a tough and authentic crime story, Tulsa King never takes itself too seriously and is well aware that it represents the meeting point between two old and not very original strands and, above all, to gravitate towards an icon of the Reagan era.
No facelift or restyling can hide the wrinkles of the tale: therefore, Winter and Sheridan do exactly the opposite, and put them in full view, deliberately casting the spotlight on this out-of-this-world hero and his struggle with the contemporary, which makes him almost transform into a modern Sisyphus. In perfect antithesis with the woke imagery of Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes, Tulsa King is a show steeped in nostalgia for another era, which makes no secret of its conservative identity and which, however, never makes the mistake of regretting the “glorious times that were”, choosing instead to fool himself with great intelligence.
It’s undeniable: Tulsa King doesn’t do anything to embody the current “quality series” archetype, and it certainly won’t please everyone. Among American critics, some have complained that the new Paramount Plus series resembles a “hamburger served to a customer who has instead ordered a plate of spaghetti with seafood”. One might reply that, apparently, the naive patron not only didn’t pay attention to the signs, but he didn’t even notice the warm and welcoming atmosphere of the pub that surrounded him! Metaphor aside, Tulsa King is a consciously popular and entertaining TV series, which does not deny the cinematic origins of Sylvester Stallone himself, nor does it aspire to be the new Boardwalk Empire.
On balance, however, our hamburger is decidedly tasty, well-finished and even gourmet, to the point of making us regret the merits of seriality and cinema of the past. At the same time, Tulsa King is not even a meteor, which tries to impress with its first two episodes and then rests on its laurels and trusts only in Stallone’s charisma: Terence Winter’s screenplay has many tricks up its sleeve, and while giving immediately a pleasant narrative experience, it keeps a large number of surprises in store for the rest of the season. Without making any spoilers, we can anticipate how the light tones of the first episodes are gradually revolutionized by a sudden dramatic turn, which will not distort the tone of the story but on the contrary will end up enriching it, raising the stakes and giving it an unexpected depth to the adventures of our Dwight. In short, it is forbidden to abandon the vision: Tulsa King has all the potential to become an authentic television jewel.
The humor tempers the harshness of Tulsa King and protects what originality such a premise can still retain, allowing the actors to inhabit characters and characters with relative ease. Well, if there’s one thing that catches the eye about this first part of Tulsa King, it won’t come to the reader as a novelty, it’s that the series is built on, for and with Sylvester Stallone. Undisputed star performer, in the folds of the story he finds a way to confront his own legendary heritage (action), offering the public the portrait of a physicality weighed down by the years but not yet knocked down, to use a pertinent analogy. Tulsa King is a series “ennobled” by Sylvester Stallone, the actor’s charisma and willingness to offer himself in an intelligently self-ironic way is enough to hide some defects of an overall structured and pleasant operation.
Tulsa King Review: The Last Words
Bringing together crime and western with the right irony, and without ever falling into farce, the first TV series starring Sylvester Stallone is propelled by Sly’s monumental performance as Dwight Manfredi and by a solid and convincing screenplay. Impossible not to feel a bit of healthy nostalgia. Tulsa King is, literally, the story of the serpent storming the Garden of Eden; the professional focus of the protagonist is to inhabit a virgin reality in relation to a certain type of criminal enterprise, occupying it with its particular form of corruption.
