HoundsOfLove
06-08-2006, 09:50 PM
OK as some of you may know I love Ray Liotta....understatement, well anyway he has a new series coming out called "Smith" and it sounds awesome.
Starring - Ray Liotta as Bobby Stevens
Virginia Madsen as Hope Stevens
Simon Baker as Jeff
Franky G as Joe
Amy Smart as Annie
Jonny Lee Miller as Tom
From the prolific producer John Wells ("ER," "The West Wing") comes the fast-paced drama SMITH, which tracks a diverse crew of career criminals as they plot and carry out high-stakes heists at prominent locations around the country. Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas") stars as the team's no-nonsense leader, looking for that one elusive big haul before going straight--or at least that's what he tells his wife ("Sideways" Oscar® nominee Virginia Madsen). He's walking a tightrope between his present life and the new one they hope is on the horizon.
and here's a review from someone who has seen the pilot episode I hope they stick to it and not go all soft.
Just finished watching a screener of the SMITH pilot, and, well, peel me off the wall.
A tip of the hat to John Wells.
This show is written, edited and shot to look like a big budget feature film and on most levels it succeeds. Best of all, it boasts a refreshing lack of "compensatory morality" -- that is, the thieves on this show are not doing what they're doing for charity, or to save the family farm, or because their son/daughter/spouse needs some kind of expensive medical treatment -- these guys are greedy bad-ass THIEVES, robbing and killing for THEMSELVES and because that's what thieves do.
What's more, these thieves are unapologetically violent people too. Cold, hard, ruthless professionals in a dangerous line of work, and when they go out on a job, they aren't packing empty firearms the way the robbers in the vastly overrated and self-important INSIDE MAN do. No sir. These mofos go to work loaded. And if some poor security guard has the misfortune of stumbling onto them mid-heist, the stars of this PRIME-TIME NETWORK TV SHOW (!) will unhesitatingly blow his @%$#@*^ brains out. That's right, the main characters in a TV show airing on CBS perform just this very deed in the pilot: Cut down a chubby, hapless, completely innocent guy on camera, and feel not a shred of remorse for it afterward, and all the while, you're rooting for them to get away with it (which they do).
Gotta love it.
The acting is top notch. Ray Liotta (looking maybe four minutes older than he did in GOODFELLAS 16 years ago) is alternately charming and ruthless as the devoted family man moonlighting as the ringleader (A/K/A "Smith") of this brutal gang of thieves, and Virginia Madsen brings luminous intelligence to the role of his loving (and suspicious) wife -- who is not without demons of her own.
Simon Baker is absolutely chilling as the primary "shooter" of the group... a seriously unbalanced character whose psychosis is illustrated early on, when he's hassled by a couple of bad-ass surfers (and please CBS, do not cut this scene when the pilot airs in September. Yeah, I know it's off-story, but it delineates Baker's character so perfectly, and, frankly, I've never seen anything like it before in prime time).
Amy Smart is terrific as the sexy and amoral "decoy" who seems to get turned on by all the mayhem, and Jonny Lee Miller rounds out the gang as Smart's Cockney, on-again/off-again boyfriend (a role somewhat underwritten in the pilot).
And okay, yeah, "SMITH" does occasionally come across as being a tad too reminiscent of a couple of Michael Mann flicks -- HEAT, from 1995, and the largely forgotten, but far superior THIEF, from 1981.
Overall, though, the Mann template is one of style, not characterization, and the people in SMITH -- smart, striving, and, when the situation demands it, utterly and amorally ruthless -- are a first for prime time, and you will not be able to take your eyes off them.
I hope that America has the stomach for it, and let's hope that CBS has the cajones not to (pardon the pun) castrate it.
Anyway, that was the long version. Here is the short review, and the highest praise I can give to any pilot: I can't wait for episode two. SMITH rocks.
Starring - Ray Liotta as Bobby Stevens
Virginia Madsen as Hope Stevens
Simon Baker as Jeff
Franky G as Joe
Amy Smart as Annie
Jonny Lee Miller as Tom
From the prolific producer John Wells ("ER," "The West Wing") comes the fast-paced drama SMITH, which tracks a diverse crew of career criminals as they plot and carry out high-stakes heists at prominent locations around the country. Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas") stars as the team's no-nonsense leader, looking for that one elusive big haul before going straight--or at least that's what he tells his wife ("Sideways" Oscar® nominee Virginia Madsen). He's walking a tightrope between his present life and the new one they hope is on the horizon.
and here's a review from someone who has seen the pilot episode I hope they stick to it and not go all soft.
Just finished watching a screener of the SMITH pilot, and, well, peel me off the wall.
A tip of the hat to John Wells.
This show is written, edited and shot to look like a big budget feature film and on most levels it succeeds. Best of all, it boasts a refreshing lack of "compensatory morality" -- that is, the thieves on this show are not doing what they're doing for charity, or to save the family farm, or because their son/daughter/spouse needs some kind of expensive medical treatment -- these guys are greedy bad-ass THIEVES, robbing and killing for THEMSELVES and because that's what thieves do.
What's more, these thieves are unapologetically violent people too. Cold, hard, ruthless professionals in a dangerous line of work, and when they go out on a job, they aren't packing empty firearms the way the robbers in the vastly overrated and self-important INSIDE MAN do. No sir. These mofos go to work loaded. And if some poor security guard has the misfortune of stumbling onto them mid-heist, the stars of this PRIME-TIME NETWORK TV SHOW (!) will unhesitatingly blow his @%$#@*^ brains out. That's right, the main characters in a TV show airing on CBS perform just this very deed in the pilot: Cut down a chubby, hapless, completely innocent guy on camera, and feel not a shred of remorse for it afterward, and all the while, you're rooting for them to get away with it (which they do).
Gotta love it.
The acting is top notch. Ray Liotta (looking maybe four minutes older than he did in GOODFELLAS 16 years ago) is alternately charming and ruthless as the devoted family man moonlighting as the ringleader (A/K/A "Smith") of this brutal gang of thieves, and Virginia Madsen brings luminous intelligence to the role of his loving (and suspicious) wife -- who is not without demons of her own.
Simon Baker is absolutely chilling as the primary "shooter" of the group... a seriously unbalanced character whose psychosis is illustrated early on, when he's hassled by a couple of bad-ass surfers (and please CBS, do not cut this scene when the pilot airs in September. Yeah, I know it's off-story, but it delineates Baker's character so perfectly, and, frankly, I've never seen anything like it before in prime time).
Amy Smart is terrific as the sexy and amoral "decoy" who seems to get turned on by all the mayhem, and Jonny Lee Miller rounds out the gang as Smart's Cockney, on-again/off-again boyfriend (a role somewhat underwritten in the pilot).
And okay, yeah, "SMITH" does occasionally come across as being a tad too reminiscent of a couple of Michael Mann flicks -- HEAT, from 1995, and the largely forgotten, but far superior THIEF, from 1981.
Overall, though, the Mann template is one of style, not characterization, and the people in SMITH -- smart, striving, and, when the situation demands it, utterly and amorally ruthless -- are a first for prime time, and you will not be able to take your eyes off them.
I hope that America has the stomach for it, and let's hope that CBS has the cajones not to (pardon the pun) castrate it.
Anyway, that was the long version. Here is the short review, and the highest praise I can give to any pilot: I can't wait for episode two. SMITH rocks.