Black Bird Review: What Do You Have In Common With A Serial Killer? Find Out In Apple Tv+ Series
Starring: Taron Egerton, Ray Liotta, Greg Kinnear
Director: Michaël R. Roskam
Streaming Platform: Apple Tv+
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Black Bird is the Apple TV+ miniseries available from Friday 8 July in streaming, consisting of 6 episodes and which tells a true crime story that cannot leave indifferent. A cheeky and bewitching boy ends up in prison and to regain his freedom early, he must prevent an alleged sadistic killer of girls from getting out of hell. At the heart of the Apple, miniseries is the true story of Jimmy Keene, played by Taron Egerton, who told the whole story in the book written with Hillel Levin In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption. The screenplay is by Dennis Lehane, the director of the first 3 episodes of Michael R. Roskam.
If after ‘The Longest Night’ we have been more eager to visit prisons, this Friday we also went from the Spanish psychiatric prison of Baruca to that of Springfield, Missouri, where the cream of the crop of the most dangerous criminals of that American countryside. But this time for real. Created and written by Dennis Lehane (The visitor), the miniseries that comes to Apple TV+ is a true crime with a slightly different perspective since those involved are more important than the events that triggered the whole cake. The fiction does not recreate any crime at all, it does not even physically place our suspect in any of them.
Black Bird Review: The Story
The son of a decorated cop, Jimmy Keene is a boy who grew up cultivating a myth about him. A former high school football star, he quickly looked for a way to make money and success and became a drug dealer. Luxury home, beautiful women, and a lot of gab that helps him to convince everyone and sell everything. Too bad that round-up nails him and despite the agreement with the prosecutor to negotiate, he ends up in prison and sentenced to 10 years.
In the first few weeks in prison, he immediately finds his ideal routine, setting up a small business and making friends with everyone. He is offered a chance: he must make friends with a suspected serial killer of girls, Larry Hall, who risks going out for an appeal sentence that could decide to free him after a forced confession. But is Larry a killer or a mythomaniac? If he accepts, Jimmy will have to go “to hell” a maximum-security prison where there are the worst and craziest criminals. Should he be able to get proof of Larry’s guilt, however, the prison doors would open for Jimmy and he would go free.
Black Bird Review And Analysis
The miniseries format now too abused for various reasons, including commercial ones, is ideal for telling true crime stories, those related to real events. Like the story told in Black Bird, a true story of perversion, redemption with a subtle psychological game between charm and crime at the center. The protagonist Jimmy Keene is bewitching and fascinating, the confidence that shines through his words and his attitude makes him a natural leader, those people who are spontaneously followed by others. Jimmy knows how to adapt and survive in any situation.
Larry Hall is his exact opposite. An insecure boy, raised in the shadow of a “normal” brother who has ruined his life from the womb, sucking part of his existence. Grown up among the dead and graves to be excavated, Larry masks his sense of inferiority by telling stories, especially related to girls who ignore him, laugh at him, and treat him differently. Accused of being a serial killer, Larry is a complex personality to interact with, but the sense of safety and security that Jimmy gives him could make a difference, leading him to open up. Jimmy has to go down to hell to survive and get his life back, but he’ll never be the same again.
Black Bird is a drama that lives on the dialogues, on the silences between the protagonists. A miniseries for actors that exalts the interpretations in particular of Taron Egerton, Ray Liotta, and Paul Walter Hauser. You get the feeling that the story, the cast, and the script are powerful but it could easily have been a movie, leaving out some aspects. For example, the whole reconstruction of the investigation of the past is false compared to the heart of the miniseries linked to the interactions in prison between Larry and Jimmy.
Black Bird, however, also leads you to reflect on the different shades of monstrosity. About those moments in life that shape existence by directing your future. Digging into Larry’s soul also allows Jimmy to delve into him and his relationship with the opposite sex.
It is one of those thrillers whose suspense is generated based on what its dialogue, written with pinpoint precision by Dehane, reveals episode after episode. Yes, of course, we find that investigative subplot so characteristic of the genre, but this one is also much more revealing than intriguing, in addition to functioning as a sample of unknown Missouri. However, for the most part, this is a disturbing character study which, although sometimes it sins of being too deep by going into the ‘before’ and not the ‘when’ with flashbacks, little by little he discovers those different visible and hidden layers that we all have or thought we didn’t have.
Furthermore, this is a miniseries that, through its male characters, reflects different variants of the same problem: misogyny. And it is that, although fiction portrays the most deplorable side of Larry Hall and his self-mystified hatred towards women, each episode leaves us with a subtle sample of this social cancer, either with comments that are not relevant dedicated to the agent Lauren McCauley -wonderful Sepideh Moafi – or through Jimmy Keene’s introspection of himself as his conversations with Hall hit the swampy ground. The series, by the way, is based on the memoirs of Keene himself, whom this experience served to radically change his life.
Played by a highly inspired Taron Egerton, Jimmy expected to walk into the lair of any wolf, but before long he realizes that he is facing evil personified. What is a drug dealer doing sharing a roof with a rapist and infanticide? Do all criminals deserve to be on the same level? No, it is not these questions that fiction tries to answer, but its forms make us believe that we could have many things in common even with an alleged serial killer. Perhaps it may be somewhat exaggerated parallelism. However, sometimes we can only heal if we come face to face with someone who reveals our darkness.
As it evolves, the relationship between Jimmy and Larry becomes an intense verbal game of cat and mouse, but only one of them knows that they are playing. Dehane manages to make his conversations more and more interesting and mesmerizing -and more disturbing, disgusting, and revealing these being the ones that manage to generate that dose of suspense and terror that the series does not provide in its investigative subplot. Especially since Larry talks about his crimes with a sick and heartbreaking aplomb, something that is reflected in the painfully restrained reactions of a traumatized Jimmy.
For his part, Paul Walter Hauser confirms once again that he is a spectacular actor who perfectly masters the times in different genres. A pity that he is sadly undervalued in the industry for physical reasons. Injustice aside, quietly Hauser has already left us a good handful of iconic characters in his career from him. His Hall is enigmatic, pitiful, and disgusting. He’s the kind of unpredictable character that turns the entire atmosphere of a scene upside down with a change of expression or subject matter. But the worst are those moments in which Hauser could make us fall into his net, and then give us a resounding slap that would make us feel bad. It is one of the best performances of the year, without a doubt.
With this, coupled with everything that happens during the investigation of the FBI agents, Dehane and his cast try to make us constantly question Larry’s guilt or innocence, while putting us in the spotlight of a prison drama and all the conflicts that this entails. To put the icing on the cake, Ray Liotta gives us one last television appearance that is hard to forget. Perhaps it is the most natural and sincere interpretation of him. It is to such an extent that one can wonder if his physical condition during filming was adequate. Be that as it may, his role as Jimmy’s sick father leaves us with heartbreaking moments only up to the greats like him.
It is true that ‘Locked up with the devil’ takes its time to put all the pieces together and start the game that we all want to see. However, it always moves forward with a well-measured pace and a narrative that knows how to arouse interest, especially as it also dares to experiment by shifting the focus of the narrative beyond its main characters. It is a creative freedom that is not fully exploited, although at least it does manage to build a different true crime within such an overloaded genre. That said, its six episodes offer a perhaps predictable experience in its development, but it does so boasting an exemplary execution and an unbeatable cast.
Black Bird Review: The Last Words
It is a new triumph for Apple, which redeems itself again after taking too many false steps in recent months. In addition, sincerity can be seen in the proposal, one that goes beyond that mania of the industry in selling us this type of production with the excuse of being inspired by real events. Here there is a clear intention to tell an exciting story and to do it well, as it has to be done. Of course, the truth is that the outcome of it feels somewhat hasty… or maybe it’s just the desire to continue opening the channel to a Larry Hall that fascinates with its darkness in this dazzling miniseries.
