Oz - The Complete Fourth Season
by Gregory Dark
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Christopher FarmerDirector: Gregory Dark
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 960 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-02-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Movie Reviews of Oz - The Complete Fourth Season
Movie Review: Ever-increasing level of drama.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a positive review, but first I feel obligated to warn potential viewers of just how bloody this season is, even compared to previous ones. A man getting his neck snapped while giving a blow job, a child getting mutilated (mostly off screen, thankfully) and an inmate being buried alive are some of the more shocking twists. These scenes are not too common, nor are they the main point of the show, but they are there.
In season four, racial tensions in Oz are at the breaking point. A white boy shoots down several black inmates and so the black population decides to take things into their own hands. Muslim leader Kareem Said and former section leader of Em City Tim McManus have a plan to stop the resultant violence...if they live long enough.
Taking up just as much time are the stories of the prisoners' daily lives. Season four has sixteen episodes instead of the usual eight, so all the characters we've come to know and love (or despise) get their time in the spotlight. Struggles with faith, friendship, love and family are the primary plot points this season as several inmates develop new relationships and find lost family members and/or religious beliefs. Many of the vilest inmates struggle for redemption, and some of them get it. Others don't.
As in previous seasons, everyman Tobias Beecher centers the show. His romance with sociopath Chris Keller hits a new low as the pair spend months trying to find ways to hurt each other after breaking up. Do they love each other enough to put aside their differences when one really needs the other? Meanwhile, Tobias's growing friendship with Kareem Said forces both to examine dark parts of their souls, while his ongoing (since season one) war with Vern Schillinger takes away part of his family, which in turn takes part of his sanity. Through all the horror, his attempts to keep his compassion are courageous and admirable, though he doesn't always succeed.
Various other plotlines thread through. Some work and others don't. On the positive end there are stories like that of the four death row inmates in Oz's walls; their conversations made for some of the most touching and best written scenes in the show. On the other hand there are a few ideas that border on absurd, such as Oz becoming a hotel for Chinese refugees and a romance between a woman and the man that murdered her husband.
Fortunately, most of the season and all of the acting is good enough that a few stray plot bunnies are forgivable. Season four of Oz is an emotionally intense, often shocking roller coaster that you won't want to stop watching. Make sure to clear a lot of time for yourself before you turn it on.
Summary of Oz - The Complete Fourth Season
(HBO Dramatic Series) The Millennium ended with a bang at Oswald State Correctional Facility Level Four--aka Emerald City--as racial tensions reached an all-time high. Now following a two-week lockdown and the appointment of a new Unit Manager things are definitely changing but not necessarily for the better. Prison officials are looking for ways to end the hostilities and return Emerald City to normal...but when was Em City ever normal? And if anyone thinks the worst is over for Oz they're wrong--dead wrong.Running Time: 960 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359901720 Manufacturer No: 99017The heightened reality of Oz remains consistently engrossing in the fourth season of HBO's volatile prison drama. All 16 episodes were written or cowritten by series creator Tom Fontana, and are bookended by the wisely sardonic observations of paraplegic prisoner Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), whose terse, philosophical ruminations about life in "Oz" give the series its literate edge. The 2000-2001 season finds Oz in the wake of racial warfare; tensions remain high among the factions that make the "Em City" cell block a hotbed of seething animosity among the skinhead Aryans led by Shillinger (J.K. Simmons); Muslim splinter groups led by Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), the fearsome Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Supreme Allah (Lord Jamar); and the resident Mafia, Latinos, and lowlifes who make up Em City's embroiled population of newcomers, hard-timers, and death-row inmates. Unit Administrator McManus (Terry Kinney) sets up a centrally located penalty cage for anyone who causes outbreaks of violence (which are shockingly frequent and frequently lethal), but loses his job in a mid-season plot development that spins Oz into a maelstrom of internal politics and brutal retaliation.
Through it all, Fontana and his collaborators (including guest director Steve Buscemi) maintain impressive focus on dozens of finely drawn characters. Laced with homosexual tension, jealousies, religious fervor, and threats of betrayal, the season's most compelling conflicts involve impulsive killer Ryan O'Reily (played with cagey menace by Dean Winters) and his brain-damaged half-brother Cyril (Scott William Winters); and the manipulative Keller (Christopher Meloni) and his prison lover Toby Beecher (Lee Tergesen), a lawyer and convicted murderer whose survival seems perpetually uncertain. Tenuous order is barely maintained by warden Glynn (Ernie Hudson) and Catholic counselor "Sister Pete" (Rita Moreno), but the bulk of Oz's fourth season is devoted to chaos, as shifting loyalties keep all prisoners (and all viewers) in a state of anxious anticipation. The criminal histories of many inmates are shown in flashback, and one death-row scenario (involving guest star Kathryn Erbe) reaches its inevitable conclusion. By the time episode 16 ends with a blazing inferno, you'll be wondering about the fate of Rev. Cloutier (Luke Perry) and anxious for the tumultuous events of season 5. (Commentary accompanies two episodes: Fontana and Moreno offer informative anecdotes on "You Bet Your Life," but the Fontana/Winters/Tergesen commentary on "Famous Last Words" is raucously undisciplined and for hardcore Oz fans only.)--Jeff Shannon
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