Advance Review: Given that the name of the show is Crossbones and not "Blackbeard," I'm a bit more forgiving of the fact that the character of Blackbeard, played by delightful over-ennunciating scene chewer John Malkovich, isn't as menacing or forceful a presence as the trailers for the series led me to believe. Still, Malkovich is the draw here, assuming you're not someone who will watch any old seafaring adventure because you're a uber-fan of the genre. So it's a rather odd choice to have his character feel so irrelevant by the end of the first episode.
Not irrelevant due to lack of screen time, but irrelevant due to the fact that Blackbeard, here shown as weary and more than happy to let the world believe he's long dead, is more of a pawn than a manipulator. And you'd expect him, with the gravitational force the character and performance creates, to be the Hannibal Lecter of the show - if I can, for a second, compare the show to NBC's amazing Hannibal. Because Blackbeard does square off, psychologically, with a "frenemy", in the form of high-level British officer Tom Lowe (Richard Coyle), who Blackbeard believes to be a physician. Truthfully though, Lowe is on an undercover mission to kill Backbeard at the behest of the Governor of Jamaica (Julian Sands).
http://ift.tt/1o20GPJ
No comments:
Post a Comment