Whenever a new Guy Ritchie film or series lands, it’s an event. Few directors have made the London gangster underground their stock and trade as successfully and as utterly brutal and sardonic as this director.
Mobland is available on Showmax and ranks amongst the best shows of the year. It’s that bingeworthy.
We meet underground London in today’s milieu. Harry Da Souza, played by Tom Hardy, is the fixer for the Irish mobster family the Harrigans; their godfather, Conrad, is cruelly animated by Pierce Brosnan.
Maeve, his wife, is his dark passenger, his conscience (if she has such a thing), and his shoulder whisperer. She’s a strategist who massages Conrad’s brutality deftly and dangerously.
Harry fixes the family’s stuff-ups, but when Harrigan’s grandson Eddie stabs a man in a club for no reason, all hell breaks loose. Then, when it turns out that the rival gang, the Stevensons’ son Tommy, was with Eddie and then went missing, it hits the fan again.
Harry’s left to make the whole problem go away, and that’s where the brutality of gangland reveals itself in its full, bloody glory. Dad Richie Stevenson is a shoot first and then ask questions kind of guy, and gives Harry a short window to find his kid, under threat of all-out gang war.
All hell breaks loose
The story is a layer cake of tension. In between managing the crises, Harry must deal with his own marital flatline. Then, there’s the family dunce cap scamster son who tries to extract cash from Conrad Harrigan’s daughter, Saraphina, the product of an affair that Maeve has never forgiven.
The police are also investigating the Harrigans and Harry at the same time, sniffing about in the way that annoys criminals to no end. It’s a lot to juggle, and then Conrad point-blank kills his own best friend to boot. Welcome to another day in Harry’s life.
There is not a moment in the series that feels like watching paint dry. Ritchie scoops his audience up like a vanilla ice cream and dishes out the trimmings like it’s Christmas for punch-ups and cruelty.
Tom Hardy’s brilliant performance adds so much humanity and depth to Harry’s character that it softens the violence and reels in empathy. He’s the good, bad guy, caught up in the malaise of others while trying to make sense of everything around him.
Hardy’s impeccable. His facial expressions, his physical demeanour and abrasive delivery of dialogue in gentle tones, exceptional.
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Helen Mirren is superb as Maeve. She’s as dry as sandpaper, and when she cheers Eddie for stabbing the clubber and later supports him for his role in having Tommy chopped to bits and boxed, her viciousness is deliciously juxtaposed with her chronic loving granny disposition. It’s magical to watch and sends shivers down anyone’s spine.
Watch the trailer
Pierce Brosnan is stoic, impulsive, ice-cold, and caring all at once. It doesn’t make sense, but he’s played his role well. The menace of Richie Stevenson is hard rocked by Geoff Bell. In fact, net the entire cast and there is not a single weak performance amongst them. Ritchie rip roars through their strengths. They complement each other effortlessly.
Mobland is a twisted gangland tale, but equally a warning about how tension between opposing sides, justified or not, can spiral out of control.
The hues of the show are drab and grim, and the pace and editing keep you on the edge of your seat while Harry flies by the edge of his pants.
A caveat is that Mobland is not family viewing. It’s not just the violence, because that’s accessible everywhere. It’s the sum of the whole that’s not appropriate for young minds, and the show is best enjoyed well after junior’s bedtime.
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