The Booze Brothers

What if The Sopranos met up with the gang from GoodFellas somewhere around the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing?

That’s a pretty fair idea of what HBO’s latest epic series, Boardwalk Empire, offers viewers. Set to premiere here Jan. 6 next year, it’s an ambitious undertaking, bringing together the febrile talents of Martin Scorsese (producer/director) and Terence Winter (writer/producer of HBO’s The Sopranos) to once again explore territory that they have, collectively, come to call their own: American gangster life.

This time, the territory is Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1920 — the year that Prohibition became US law, barring the selling and making of alcohol. “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi, a Sopranos and Coen brothers regular) is a local political figure who champions the Women’s Temperance League cause — and with good reason. With alcohol outlawed, he and his cohorts stand to make millions through smuggling, watering down and selling booze at a huge mark-up.

Thompson takes in young Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), a WWI vet, giving him a job in the bootlegging business. But Thompson’s business also intersects with Italian and Jewish crime bosses from Chicago and New York, not to mention abused wife Margaret Schroeder (Kelly McDonald), whom Thompson also takes under his wing.

The media got a preview of Boardwalk Empire’s pilot in a lavish rollout at the Member’s Club in The Fort. Press people were encouraged to wear period hats — fedoras and berets for men, feathery cloches for women — for a contest; prizes were given out. HBO’s heavy investment in this new series is understandable: the first season’s 12 episodes came in at a production cost of $65 million (the pilot alone cost $18 million). Of course, it has the blessings of estimable gangland chronicler Scorsese, who gave us Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Casino and Gangs of New York. It possesses some of the grit of Scorsese’s best work (he directs the first episode), but it also has some of the obsessive detailing of his period movies, like the glossy Age of Innocence, The Aviator, and Gangs of New York.

Not only that, it represents the first post-Sopranos project for Terence Winter, a key player in that show’s success. A lot of people grieved when The Sopranos finally slept with the fishes after six seasons; they wanted to know more about this dysfunctional family they’d grown to love, warts and all. Will Boardwalk Empire generate the same viewer loyalty? The whole thing depends on how interested audiences are in the bootlegging wars of a bygone era. It also depends on how well the characters are fleshed out and how the story arc develops. Audiences can be fickle, especially in these fast-forward/DVD box set days, but the show has been renewed for a second season.

Based on a chapter from Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson, it focuses on the changes that made Atlantic City and its famous Boardwalk such a crime paradise back in the ‘20s and ‘30s. Beneath the usual fedoras and sharp-cut suits is a somewhat muted message about the wisdom of outlawing human vices — a nod to the failed drug policies of the US, perhaps, which tend to clog up prisons, spur horrendous drug wars in Mexican border towns, and do little to reduce demand.

Prohibition was repealed in 1933 (it took another Constitutional amendment to do it), but not before bolstering the criminal empires of many gangster bosses — Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, both featured in the series, among them. (One rumored bootlegger who managed to parlay his alleged rum-running fortune into politics was Joseph Kennedy, father to future President JFK.)

Interestingly, Boardwalk Empire goes for an unlikely leading man in Buscemi whose face, voice and presence are forever entwined with our viewings of Fargo, Reservoir Dogs, The Sopranos (playing Tony Soprano’s cousin, Tony Blundetto, in season five), Con Air and The Big Lebowski. Yes, some women do actually find Buscemi to be attractive, even “sexy ugly.” (Well, he did do a credible job playing Thora Birch’s love interest in Ghost World.) Here, he tones down the motormouth/Looney Toons persona we know and love so well and turns in a subdued, more layered character. Maybe he learned a few moves from James Gandolfini.

The pacing of episode one actually resembles The Sopranos in many ways: The absence of background music. The oblique shifts from scene to scene. But since it’s Scorsese directing, he also gives us some virtuosic set pieces, like the roadside whiskey hijacking that mirrors GoodFellas, and the occasional hints of explosive violence.

Perhaps the thing that makes crime dramas so alluring to HBO viewers, and guys in general, is the exercise of power: the implicit promise that these wise guys can and will flex their muscle whenever necessary. It may be a dish served cold, or an explosive pasta in the face, but payback is something people like to fantasize about. As unhealthy as that might be.

Michael Pitt — having cavorted naked with Eva Green in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers and tied up Naomi Watts in Funny Games — extends his range a bit playing Darmody, a guy who wants his own piece of the pie. Kelly McDonald — always a pleasure to watch, whether it’s Trainspotting, Gosford Park or No Country for Old Men — promises to bring some heart to this tale of largely hard-hearted men. Other mugs to look for in the cast include Michael Shannon (last seen playing crazed hit maker Kim Fowley in The Runaways) as FBI agent Nelson Van Alden; Michael Stuhlbarg (great in the Coens’ A Serious Man) as New York gangster Arnold Rothstein; Gretchen Mol (The Notorious Betty Page); and yes, Dabney Coleman.

Not surprisingly, Winter also lassos key Sopranos directors for season one, including Tim Van Patten and Allen Coulter. HBO, of course, has become an electromagnet for Hollywood’s best talent, and if it keeps producing series like The Sopranos, Band of Brothers, Sex and the City, Entourage, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire (to name but a few), it will continue to prove that people actually should still watch TV. At least once in a while.

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Boardwalk Empire premieres on HBO Asia Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011, 9 p.m., with two episodes back to back.