Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenson71
I was geared up to pulling the trigger on Paramount+ for this purpose. But the early reviews deterred me. The trailer also looked really . . . fantastical, or exaggerated.
I'm very willing to be persuaded to jump in.
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I've caught a couple more episodes, and I gotta reiterate and amplify my high estimation of Goode as Evans. Might be the best thing I've seen on television in years.
Nobody is bad or distracting. I won't spoil how some of the characters you'll be familiar with are portrayed or by whom [other than what you can see in a trailer], but they play it pretty low-key and straightforward, not a lot of caricatures [unless you count some of the actual Mafioso being portrayed]
Teller doesn't exactly embody Ruddy, but unless you are a complete geek, he's not someone whose persona is established for you anyway. Probably most people watching don't even know who Ruddy is beforehand. And Teller is fine in the role as written, even if it isn't an exact replication of the actual personality. And Ruddy himself, at 90-something, was intimately involved in the production, so I doubt he would let Teller's portrayal of his own self ring false, at least to his own vision of himself in that time.
It's tough for me to divorce my love for the subject matter and my enjoyment of seeing it dramatized. There are other narrative paths this could have taken or other aspects that could have been more the center of attention, but it's a pretty darn good tale just as a story, and all the moreso for it being based in fact.