Sons of Anarchy: Season One
by Allen Coulter, Bill Gierhart, Charles Haid, Guy Ferland, Gwyneth Horder-Payton
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Maggie Siff, Mark Boone Junior, Ron PerlmanDirector: Allen Coulter, Bill Gierhart, Charles Haid, Guy Ferland, Gwyneth Horder-Payton
Brand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 594 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-08-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Box set; Color; Dolby; DVD; Widescreen; Subtitled; NTSC
Movie Reviews of Sons of Anarchy: Season One
Movie Review: Great show
Summary: 5 Stars
The Shield may be lamentably gone from TV, but prominent alumnus Kurt Sutter seems to have taken it upon himself to carry on its legacy with Sons of Anarchy, and if the show's first season is any indication he's more than up to the task. Anyone who enjoyed The Shield's combination of intelligence and testosterone will certainly find a lot to like here, as SoA quickly established itself as among TV's most unique and consistently compelling shows and only got better from there. Striking a near-perfect balance between grit and sensationalism, it takes viewers through a world marked by violence, double-dealing, and racial division, with an emphasis on the ambiguous morality and personal and familial baggage that come with a life lived between the straight world and the criminal one. The machinations of the characters and the twists of the plot are almost operatic, but the show remains rooted in the harsh realities of gangland.
The premise is sort of Hamlet-meets-the-Sopranos: youthful biker and new dad Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) finds himself trying to balance work with personal life as the Vice President of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcylcle Club Redwood Original (aka SAMCRO), a gun-running biker gang co-founded by his late father and now run by his stepfather Clay Morrow (the ever-swaggering Ron Perlman), who's married to Clay's widowed mother Gemma (Katey Sagal, in pretty much the biggest departure possible from her Married With Children days). From the somewhat hippie-ish beginnings envisioned by Jax's father, SAMCRO has evolved into a criminal powerhouse, especially in their central California base of Charming, where they're practically a small-town Mafia. These guys may not be as bad as the Hell's Angels, but the show makes it clear that they're far from harmless nonconformists, as we see them running guns, committing murders and (in one particularly stunning scene) burning off the tattoo of a perfidious former member. Single-episode plots focusing on the gang's efforts to turn a profit and stay out of trouble are expertly mixed with longer arcs dealing with the constant conflicts of gangland life and the mounting tensions within the club. As the season progresses, it increasingly develops into a battle of viewpoints between Clay's world-weary cynicism and Jax's (relatively) idealistic leanings and pangs of conscience, which leads inexorably to a conclusion that already has me drooling in anticpation of season two.
In another welcome parallel with The Shield, the show's writing gets progressively more complex and nuanced as the season goes on, giving the cast, a nice assemblage of recognizable (but not household) names, a lot of room to work. Further cementing his status as Hollywood's leading Jewish tough-guy actor, Perlman is impossible not to watch as Clay, the club leader who walks a fine line between toughness and ruthlessness. Clay's a classic antihero in the Tony Soprano-Vic Mackey mold, whose occasional moments of decency don't quite compensate for his myriad of bad acts, but he's practically a softie compared to his wife. Taking the concept of standing by her men very seriously, Gemma's the very picture of steely determination, willing to say and do anything to safeguard her family, and she shares both Clay's ability to perceive all the angles and his lack of reservations in doing what needs to be done.
For his part, Jax is certainly no saint, but he hasn't quite been won over to the Machiavellian value system championed by his mother and stepfather. Constantly tugging at his conscience are the newly-discovered writings of his late father John, a somewhat intellectual type who didn't necessarily intend for the club to become a crime syndicate. The voice-over narration of John's journal is a bit of a contrived device in a show largely devoid of them, but it does nicely frame the struggles that come to define the season. This season also sees a succession of great supporting turns from recognizable faces--Jay Karnes as a twisted ATF agent with a thing for Jax's ex, Mitch Pileggi as a vicious Nazi meth lord, Ally Walker as an enjoyably amoral Fed who vows to take the Sons down--that only serve to up the entertainment quotient. Even the law-enforcement officers--the shady, compromised Chief Unser and the more principled, by-the-book Deputy Chief Hale--eventually emerge as multi-dimensional characters in their own right.
Overall, it's extremely difficult to find fault with this season. SoA seems to have flown under the radar a bit while shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad get all the acclaim, and while those are both great shows I think SoA easily holds its own as one of the best on TV right now. If it maintains its level of quality in season two, we viewers could have yet another all-time great on our hands.
Summary of Sons of Anarchy: Season One
Genre: Television: Series
Rating: TVMA
Release Date: 18-AUG-2009
Media Type: DVD
The roar of a motorcycle can signal freedom--or trouble. Sons of Anarchy examines a biker gang from both perspectives, as Jackson "Jax" Teller (Charlie Hunnam, Nicholas Nickleby) struggles between loyalty to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Originals (aka SAMCRO or "Sam Crow," which his dead father founded) and doubts about the criminal and often brutal actions the club demands of him. The series opens with a rival gang stealing the Sons' stash of guns and the premature birth of Jax's son, two events that sow questions in Jax's mind about the life he's leading. Over the course of the season, these questions will spark dangerous conflict with the gang's leader, Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman, Hellboy) and with his own mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal, Married with Children), who's now married to Clay. Despite the macho setting, Gemma is the standout character of the first season of Sons of Anarchy: fierce and manipulative, she sets the good of the club (and her own desires) above everything else--even her love for her son. Despite the lingering presence of his junkie ex-wife (Drea de Matteo, The Sopranos), Jax finds himself drawn to his high school sweetheart, Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff, Mad Men), now a doctor, and who saved his son's life.
Throughout the first season of Sons of Anarchy, SAMCRO grapples with a multicultural array of foes: Hispanic bikers, African-American gangbangers, white supremacists, an Asian triad, and agents of the ATF. Uneasy alliances and precarious compromises rarely work out as planned, leading to nail-biting confrontations and headaches for Jax. But the rituals and emotional bonds of the club itself are the real subject of the show--how an institution built on friendship and family loyalty gets twisted by ambition and greed. One particularly compelling story line follows Jax and his best friend, Opie (Ryan Hurst, Remember the Titans), who had stepped away from the gang to make peace with his wife; to help Jax, he reenters the biker life, with horrific consequences. The creator of Sons of Anarchy, Kurt Sutter, was a writer and actor on The Shield, and fans of that show will find a similarly compelling mixture of scheming machinations and compromised morality here, grounded in excellent performances and vivid production. --Bret Fetzer
Stills from Sons of Anarchy: Season One (Click for larger image)
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