Over half a century since its heyday film noir endures as a source of both earnest tribute and knowing parody. Perhaps the most convincing reason for this is its striking visual signature; the shadows, the menacing urban environment and the suit-hat-gun combination of its male principals. The strength of these images means that It’s very easy to produce an ‘idea’ of noir, a general impression of it that encompasses all of these elements while missing the central ingredient of moral uncertainty and outright cynical worldview that made it work as a narrative artform. It’s certainly interested in the idea of moral ambiguity, its anti-hero, LAPD detective and former Marine Joe Teague offers a cliché-packed voiceover that explains that the world is divided into good guys and bad guys, or as he puts it, ‘white hats and black hats’, while a handful of ‘grey hats’, (in which group he includes himself) walk the narrow ethical strip that divides them. It’s a game attempt at making a pithy summary of the show’s bleak moral universe but it’s so reductive as to almost be laughable. White, black or grey, it reduces the environment once again to little more than suits and hats and guns. There are a lot of guns. Comparisons with Boardwalk Empire feel a little unfair, but given that Mob City opens with two real-life figures who have also appeared in the HBO drama, it’s impossible not to. It does the new show no favours at all. Boardwalk examines the response of the criminal fraternity to the new opportunity provided by Prohibition. It’s violent, sure, but it’s also considered. We spend a lengthy period of time in learning the reasons for the violence. In Mob City, the violence appears as a wall of machine gun fire, the camera lingering on the ballistics and the bloodshed. It’s violence as money-shot, there simply for its own sake. In adapting the book, showrunner Frank Darabont (formerly of The Walking Dead) has added considerable fictional elements, including Detective Teague and mob-connected comedian Hecky Nash (Simon Pegg). This all makes clear narrative sense and gives Darabont room for manoeuvre whenever he needs it. The trouble is that in picking and choosing which parts of Buntin’s book to adapt, he’s missed out on some rich items of detail and loses rather a lot of what made LA Noir so interesting. Here’s a case in point. An early scene involves a tense rendezvous at an LA oilfield. Buntin’s book describes how the oilfields were the reason for LA’s very existence as men came from all over America to seek their fortune. It’s an item of genuine historical detail that doubles as a neat metaphor: LA as a magnet that drew men in to get both rich and dirty. In the show, the oilfield simply provides a moody and plot-assistingly helpful location for a dangerous scene. (The deadliness of the location is outlined for the viewer in excruciatingly expositional detail). This is the problem writ large: the book makes Los Angeles into a character; the show just turns it into little more than a beautiful backdrop. It’s sometimes considered poor form for a critic to review the show they wanted to see rather than the one that they’ve been presented with, but given that Mob City is presented as an explicit adaptation of Buntin’s book, it’s reasonable to point out where it falls short. Neal McDonough, playing buttoned-down cop Bill ‘The Boy Scout’ Parker also carries his character well, though is given less to do. Parker is one of the most fascinating characters in American law enforcement (as well as providing one-time LA cop Gene Rodenberry with the inspiration for Spock), and while his relegation to side character is narratively just, it means that we’re given less time among the white hats when compared to the black and the grey. Of the black, Ed Burns and Jeremy Luke as Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen are a little too mobster-by numbers and the show a little too keen to dwell on them, costing the narrative some of its balance, The standout is the always excellent Robert Knepper who brings a lizard-like quality to Sid Rothman, a man who found a way to make a good living from his sociopathic tendencies. With few checks on his murderous impulses, Rothman ironically offers the show’s best insights into the emotional conditions of any of its main characters. Everyone else feels too hollow, too repressed and too empty of interest. Mekia Cox as Anya, the bartender is also a little by-the-numbers, riffing off Teague’s leaden bar chat with a strangely sexless ready wit, while Jasmine Fontaine (Alexa Davalos) has the most noir-ish name of all time for a reason. She’s a perfect distillation of every femme fatale you ever saw. As such, Fontaine personifies the show. It’s a collection of well-observed tropes from a hundred noir dramas packaged up into a competent but unsatisfying whole. There’s no denying that Mob City looks good. Really good. In parts, it resembles the Mr. Sandman sequence from Back to the Future, giving us a tour of mid-century LA with all its shine still intact. Unfortunately, with so little else going for it, it just comes over a little bit like a film noir theme park. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
