With Helen Mirren pulling cocaine out of her cleavage and Pierce Brosnan adjusting his balls, “MobLand” is laced with the “Gentlemen” director’s morbid sense of humor and rooted in his fondness for grim-and-gritty gangster stories.
Few character names feel as ill-fitting for Tom Hardy as “Harry De Souza.” Frankly, few names feel as ill-fitting for each other as the first name “Harry” and the surname “De Souza.” Harry is no frills. It’s what Harolds call themselves when they don’t want to sound like a stuffy old man. The tradeoff is a bit childish, sure, but Harry is also so ubiquitous that just about everyone knows one. De Souza, the internet tells me, is also a common name — in Portugal. Its Wikipedia page is embellished with a coat of arms, and the spelling (with a “z” instead of an “s”) is listed as the surname’s “archaic form.” Tom Hardy is not archaic. He’s edgy. He isn’t Portuguese, either, to the best of my knowledge. He’s English (with an Irish blessing from his mom’s side). Tom Hardy makes sense as a Harry, but a Harry De Souza?
“MobLand” doesn’t care. If I were a character in “MobLand,” and I said what I just wrote to Harry De Souza’s face, he would punch me in the neck the second I mentioned “Wikipedia.” Sure, I could conjure some hoity-toity rationale for why writer and creator Ronan Bennett chose “Harry De Souza” for his lead character’s name — something like, it represents Harry’s status as a go-between; a fixer; a man who can be anyone and do anything at any time. “Not only are you a man who can dig holes, you’re a man who can play chess,” as one character says, describing Harry to Harry.
But it’s just as likely that Harry’s name came to be during “MobLand’s” hurried development process. The new Paramount+ series was originally designed as a prequel to “Ray Donovan,” and in just 12 months, its own name changed from “The Donovans” to “The Associate” to “Fixer” to the eventual winner, “MobLand,” a one-word title with two capital letters.
I can’t speak to how much of “The Donovans” still remains in the final product — I couldn’t stick with Liev Schreiber’s long-running Showtime drama about an American fixer — but I can say that Hardy has never sounded clearer. His name may be a mouthful, but his mouth is potently unimpeded. There’s no weird vocal tick or curiosity-spiking accent. He’s not hampered by a mask or a face cage or some other speaking impediment. He sounds like… well, I can’t say he sounds like himself, because how would anyone ever know what Tom Hardy really sounds like (and I say that as someone who’s met him), but he sounds like an Englishman who shouldn’t be fucked with, which is spot on.
As much as I love when Hardy spits out an utterly unheard of enunciation, his casual everyman-ness gives Harry — and his show! — a jolt of authoritative star power that helps it start off strong.
Also helpful: “MobLand” feels like a Guy Ritchie joint, top to bottom. The writer/director behind “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch,” and “Wrath of Man” helms the first two episodes and serves as an executive producer on the series. Unlike the Netflix reboot of his 2019 film of the same name, “The Gentlemen,” he’s not a writer on “MobLand” (Bennett and “The Agency’s” Jez Butterworth handle the initial scripts), but he may as well be. Harry is another classic Ritchie protagonist: a tough, loyal, put-upon fella who’s earned the respect of the criminal underworld he calls home, yet knows better than to trust that guarantees his safety.
Cast in black and blue shadows, as if Harry’s inhabited world is perpetually bruised, “MobLand” is a darker, more self-serious version of Ritchie’s gangster sagas. It’s far less playful than “The Gentlemen,” even if it trods similar territory, telling a classic tale of rival crime families operating within a global crime syndicate: There’s the Stevensons, whose latest boffo enterprise is selling fentanyl on the black market. That’s really all we know about the Stevensons, save for one key detail: Harry doesn’t like them. He doesn’t explain why, even when asked to elaborate, he just calls their boss a bad word and leaves it at that.
The implication is that Harry doesn’t like the Stevensons because he works for their competitor: the Harrigans, our principal players, led by Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and Maeve (Helen Mirren). Conrad spends a lot of time enjoying his wealth, whether that means savoring a private dinner out (while Harry negotiates a peace treaty in the restaurant’s basement) or going fly-fishing off the dock in his massive estate’s sizable backyard (while an old friend weighs the pros and cons of starting a London gang war). Brosnan is having a blast, deploying his thick Irish brogue with extra bite and savoring his character’s exacting nature even when he seems to be laying low.
Meave is even more of a homebody. She rides horses, drinks wine, and spoils her grandson. Granted, she’s spoiling her 20-something grandson with little baggies of cocaine, and she’s drinking wine while deciding whether some random schmuck lives or dies, but still: She’s enjoying her golden years. Like its leads, “MobLand” tells it like it is from the jump, and the gruff urgency makes a familiar story easier to enjoy. “You’re an Irish Gangster first and an English Gentleman second,” Maeve says to her husband, laying out his personality as clearly as an earlier close-up shot that shows a besuited Conrad adjusting his balls. “You may be a good lawyer, but don’t forget: I’m still the fucking judge,” he says back to her, bluntly reemphasizing the wit and sagacity she’s shown in previous scenes.
The grown Harrigan kids handle various aspects of the business — save for the eldest, Brendan (played by Daniel Betts), who’s made two mistakes too many to be kept in the loop — but it’s their kids who may be the family’s downfall. Eddie (Anson Boon), Conrad and Maeve’s grandson and Kevin’s (Paddy Considine) son, goes out clubbing one night, starts a fight, and attacks a guy. But that’s not the problem. Harry can cover that up an assault before breakfast. The problem is that Eddie went out with Tommy Stevenson, the heir to the Stevenson family empire, and he hasn’t been seen since.
Now it’s up to Harry to A) keep the peace by keeping the Stevenson family from seeking vengeance (yes, the same people he openly called “cunts”) or B) ensure the Harrigans come out unscathed once the shooting starts. And it does seem like the shooting will start sooner rather than later. Paramount only made two episodes of “MobLand” available for review, so it’s hard to say exactly where the first season is headed, but its brusque tone and violent nature seem to invite conflict as readily as Conrad and Maeve. (Conrad proposes going to war simply because his family, having offed a few enemies already without much blowback, is on “a hot streak.”)
The series also fits right in with the streamer’s brand of macho dramas: The opening episodes’ mixture of black comic banter (Conrad complains about eating too much Turkish Delight while crushing a Turkish mobster’s windpipe), sudden bloodshed (people are shot, stabbed, and beaten without warning), and a overworked man in the middle (poor Harry) could just as easily describe other Paramount+ dramas like “Landman,” “Tulsa King,” or “Mayor of Kingstown.”
So far, Tom Hardy’s show is far more tolerable than Billy Bob Thornton’s or Jeremy Renner’s, if not quite as enjoyable as Sylvester Stallone’s, but it has plenty of time to move up or down in the rankings. For now, just know that even though Tom Hardy’s name is somewhat inexplicable, his voice is exactly what “MobLand” needs. / indiewire.com
VIDEO
