Those of us who have watched the
reboot of the Star Trek films knows
that one of the more outstanding features of them is Chris Pine’s portrayal of
Captain Kirk. With his rough and more jagged approach, he has a human quality
that many of the other Starship captains have lacked in the recent years of the
franchise. That star quality has held him well in such films as Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Wonder Woman. Yet there have always been
deeper levels even to that charisma. One saw in the battered down bank robber
at the center of Hell or High Water, the
modern classic where Pine shared the screen with legend Jeff Bridges and
character actor par excellence Ben Foster, and was more than up to the task.
Therefore, it’s easy to see why the
collaboration of Pine with his Wonder
Woman director Patty Jenkins for the TNT limited series I Am The Night would be one of the more
eagerly anticipated events for TV this year. And no matter what you think of
the series as a whole, one can’t argued that fans of Pine will not be denied
their money’s worth. Playing Jay Singletary, a heavy drinking, heroin addicted
reporter for a third-rate LA paper, Pine manages to dominate every scene he’s
in. He was one a promising reporter, but he chased the wrong story and its
basically broken him. In the first episode, desperate to get the picture of a
murdered woman that he ends up locking himself in a morgue to get the
picture, realizes how far he’s fallen,
and bursts out laughing – something he can’t stop doing even when the cops
starts beating him up. He is less then a shell of a man, hiring prostitutes
more for conversation then for sex. Yet given the chance the follow the story
that broke him, he manages to find vitality despite all of the odds.
Pine is by far the best thing about
this series. Unfortunately, so much of I
Am The Night is dominated by the second major plot – Fauna Hodel (India
Eisley), a mixed raced teenager light-skinned enough to ‘pass’, who finds out
from another of her mother’s drunken ravings that she is not her daughter, and
that she basically adopted her from a stranger. Desperate to find her real
parents, she goes from Nevada to Los Angeles
Unfortunately, after two episodes,
writer Sam Sheridan has done precious little to connect the dots between these
three figures. It’s pretty clear that the story that sunk Jay had something to
do with Hodel, but we still don’t know what it is that is causing so many
people to warn him off or lure him in. And the way Fauna keeps getting pulled
around by wealthy people speaking in ambiguities is really at this point so
clichéd that it’s hard to see the point. I
Am The Night is based on a true story, as TNT keeps reminded us. They
should, however, be well aware that ‘true’ doesn’t necessarily mean
‘interesting’, or as in many cases, ‘coherent’.
Maybe I would have more faith as to
the dramatist’s powers if the network bringing us this series was Showtime or
FX rather than TNT. TNT has made some real strides in the last few years when
it comes to original programming, but when it comes to limited series, they’re
still way behind. They have no problem get the talent onscreen, it’s the
writers and directors that have me worried. To be fair, Jenkins has been doing
fine job with the direction – there have been more than a few shots that are
very cinematic. But a lot of the time, it still plays like a 1950s melodrama
brought to the 21st century.
For now, I Am The Night does demonstrate the skills of Jenkins and Pine in a
smaller canvas. But given the lack of an actual story that is it captivating
or, up to this point, understandable, I don’t think it’ll resonate the way so
many of the great limited series have been.
Maybe they’ll draw it together in the end, and I’ll keep watching till
they do. But for now, this series just
seems like a pale imitation of so many better ones.
My score: 2.5 stars.
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