Why are we talking about a TV series released in 2013 today? Because after seven successful seasons with Showtime production (Homeland, Shameless, Dexter, Billions), it was abruptly closed, with all the queue of controversy even with the members of the same cast, as well as by the numerous fans. In partial compensation, Ray Donovan-The Movie is about to be released, to close what was abruptly suspended two years ago.
Like the historian Mister Wolf of Pulp Fiction, Ray is one who cleans up the dirt of others. In Hollywood, far away from his native Boston, an up and coming young actor, a famous sports champion, a powerful producer, a billionaire rapper are all potential clients of his agency. Ray hides evidence, creates alibis, cleans up compromising scenes, hides under the carpet everything that could harm the clients of the legendary agent Ezra Goodman, who has taken him under his protective wing for years.
Ray, a poor Irish boy turned wealthy businessman, has as his life purpose the protection of his beloved family, a wife who has been with him since he was a boy in the violent streets of a city ravaged by crime, a superficial son and a very controversial daughter, both unaware of their father’s past and of his current profession. But in the pursuit of well-being that also leads to social recognition, Ray has distanced himself further and further from his loved ones, closed in a shell of painful memories and never elaborated traumas.
While solving the most disparate and absurd cases, with an ease that often overflows into lawlessness and even crime, Ray has to deal with the skeletons of his closet, which are all concentrated in the figure of his father Mickey, who at the beginning of the series gets out of jail after 20 years, one of the most devious, slimy and nefarious characters ever written. It must be said that every now and then the casting staff do their job well and the choice of interpreters has contributed to the success of this series.
Ray has the closed and wary face of Liv Schreiber, Ezra was a sublime Elliott Gould and, to top it off, his father is played by Jon Voight, the great actor from the days of A Man from the Sidewalk, today alas better known for being the father of Angelina Jolie. Neglected on the big screen in recent years, here throughout the seasons he has had the opportunity to refine a well-written character who has benefited immensely from his interpretation: with his looks and neighborhood bully movements remained intact over the years, the face from unpunished ready to assume the expression of circumstance, able to insinuate himself in every fold favorable to him, astute and manipulative, because the laws of the road have made him become what he was and has remained.
Even the actor who played him as a young man, Bill Heck, was well chosen, to show what this degenerate family man was like, charming but totally unscrupulous, a free hitter always looking for easy money, one line. of cocaine and a woman to bang, yet endowed with an extraordinary luck that has always allowed him to slip off at the right time, to turn a situation upside down, to take advantage even of his mistakes. And never pay the penalty for their misdeeds.
The seasons have covered events of all kinds, but the tone has never been light, misfortunes of all kinds have fallen on Ray’s family and also the inevitable attention of the Police has become more stringent. And the weight of a past that has grown more distressing from year to year sagged Ray’s shoulders as the narrative moved away from individual cases, focusing on the deviant family. Let’s not forget that this is not a summary film of the series, but an eighth season condensed into a film and therefore it would be better to be on par with the events until the seventh season, otherwise you can lose the thread.
Ray is hunting down his father, to put an end once and for all to the consequences of his criminal actions, his reckless selfishness, his total lack of moral sense, which have given him and his three brothers only dramatic problems. For this reason he returns to Boston, the cradle of all poisons. As he unravels the risky situations in which his father dragged him, he retraces other years of his tormented childhood and youth, illuminating corners that had not been touched in previous seasons, even if we have learned so much about his past and his family. And one wonders once more how he survived. But the return to the past takes him further and further away from the future. Eventually he will finish his task, unlike expected, once again doing what he does best, “cleaning”. How, we will only know at the end.
In two years Schreiber has aged, he has grown heavy, but he is always very valid in the rendering of his unhappy and brutal character. Instead he kept Jon Voight very well. At their side we find many characters from previous seasons, all faces chosen with great care and entrusted to well-known actors, including Eddie Marsan (one of the brothers), Dash Mihok, the other slow-brained brother, Katherine Moenning (his trusted assistant. ).
Even in previous seasons, the cast had been excellent, with Paula Malcomson (Ray’s wife) and many well-known faces such as Lisa Bonet, Rosanna Arquette, James Woods, Steven Bauer and countless others, Susan Sarandon also transited into the series. Directing there were directors like John Dahl, Allen Coulter, Schreiber himself. The director of this film is David Hollander, who was executive producer, author and director of some episodes of the TV series, so I know well the subject. Writing, together with the director and Schreiber, we find Ann Biderman, original author of the series, as well as the beautiful Southland series (little seen, to be recovered) and the innovative NYPD Blue.
Ray Donovan was a very harsh series, very “black”, in its painting with a psychoanalytic approach a terrible environment like that of the very Catholic and gangster Boston of the poor neighborhoods, also devastated by pedophile priests. And the move to bright California did not solve the problems, because basically the illegality, the oppression, the thirst for money and so on enumerating all the vices of the worst human being, thrive very well in the shade of ancient stones as well as sunny ones. palms. Because they travel in the wake of human beings, incurably led to Evil. And all Catholicly subject to the thunderbolt of a divine punishment, which however often misses the aim.
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