The Wire - The Complete Third Season
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Movie Reviews of The Wire - The Complete Third Season
Movie Review: Mission accomplished
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've made it to reading about the third season of The Wire, there's no shortage of the amount of praise you've heard, so let me start with something I didn't love about season 3. Trying to create a theme this season about politics, season 3 spends a great deal of time on a plotline about Councilman Carcetti, played dutifully by Aidan Gillen, and his seething need to be mayor. I have to admit that as a rod for the season, I didn't care about it that much - his campaign manager, played by Brandy Burre, is also a rather uninteresting character, or perhaps, I'm forced to admit, that Burre is the first actor hired onto The Wire to be beneath her part.
I start with the way it doesn't work because while it's going on, you're treated to some of the most astonishing television ever created (there's that praise again), and to say that eventually, Carcetti's plotline joins the fold and gets interesting. It joins the fold through a different rod of the season - Mjr Colvin, embodied with fierce drive by Robert Wisdom, who decides to conquer the Baltimore drug problem, in a way, by moving it - he drives the dealers we've come to be familiar with and some others into a "free zone" where drugs can be legalized, an idea that works to an extent, but one that no one can talk about without destroying the world around them. It's that "talk" that the season is really about - that is to say, the politics, from the top down. Beyond Carcetti's literal politics and Colvin's political maneuvering within the police department, there's the internal politics of the drug world - of our familiar faces of Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) competing in their own way for the heart of what it means to be gangsters - is it blood or business that keeps them all going? The combination of the drug world and the political world - and that includes our always-central crew of detectives, each of whom go through their own political and personal disaster or two in the course of the year - is what makes The Wire so free of easy answers, and so impossible to shake.
There are two scenes that, I think, embody what the show succeeds at so well this season - in the first, late in "Time After Time," the season premiere, Colvin cruises his police car around his filth and crime-ridden West Baltimore streets. He stops as a young boy tries to sell him crack. Colvin pulls out his badge, his hat, etc., and with each step, the boy is completely unthwarted in his attempt. We think, not knowing Colvin, that we're about to see a cop crusing for addictions of his own, but we see the opposite - the heartbreak of the streets on those that want to do good, and the total irrelevance of police in stopping it. The scene crushes expectations nearly as quickly as it does your heart.
And the second? The second scene that blew my mind is the one that taught me that Idris Elba, sitting under our nose as Stringer Bell for so long, could be one of the great actors of his generation. During "Homecoming" he's having dinner with Donette (Shamyl Brown), D'Angelo Barksdale's lonely widow, when Stringer snaps at her about telling D'Angelo's mother that D's murder may have been a murder. Stringer is the drive of all the season's best drama, but it's at the point he yells at her, revealing the gangster under the chilly pose, that we realize, fully, just who he is. Where it goes from there during the remainder of the season is pure business on this show - as cynical as it is daring, as fearless as it is inevitable. To watch Elba's work this season is to see the capabilities on a television show that holds its audience's intelligence at a premium, and does it by fulfilling its own storytelling capabilities. What happens this season changes everything we've seen on The Wire up to this point - its finale, "Mission Accomplished," ties up so many loose ends, its hardly a surprise that we even see a "Reelect Frank Sabotka" poster in its final minutes - that you're shocked at just what dramatic power it retains.
Movie Review: The Wire - series 3
Summary: 5 Stars
I received this product is good order and it was worth every dime I paid
for it. Am looking forward to series four which I have pre-ordered
Movie Review: This is great television
Summary: 5 Stars
It has been said that tv is a medium, because it is neither rare nor well-done. This is the exception. Not since 'Homicide - life on the streets' have the mean streets of Baltimore appeared so real. No neat happy endings, No 1 hour plot arcs. This is as good as it gets. Don't just buy the third series, get them all.Movie Review: The Wire is Wonderful
Summary: 5 Stars
I own all three seasons of The Wire and I can't wait tor season 4 and season 5 and the rest to come. The script, the acting and directing and everyone involved with the creation of show are wonderful and if it w as'nt for the writers... what imagination!!! Regards Robert Warren, Melbourne, Australia.Movie Review: A Breath of Fresh Air
Summary: 5 Stars
I was feeling pretty down on television in general and had pretty much renounced it until i was sucked into the 4th season of "The Wire", the most sincere piece of work I have ever seen put onto film. It was the only thing that has come close to bringing me to tears in a long while, and that was before I had the pleasure of viewing the previous three seasons. Of course i bought them immediately and was utterly destroyed by the whole magnitude and genius of the thing. Added is the fact that it must be the most overlooked show in the history of television, which is both a crime and somewhat of a relief, as I hate hype(the sopranoes).
Every single season is brilliant, and it seems to just keep getting better and better. Honestly, the first season, while heartwrenching, is probably my least favorite, just because the subsequent three are the best things I've ever seen. Season by season, the writing has matured into something of it's own, untouchable by any other novel or tv show. every single utterance seems to be absolutely integral to the bigger picture and almost always results in reciprocation and consequences.
The acting is probably my favorite part of the show, as these actors and actresses are almost all unknown in mainstream media, making their characters so believable it's frightening(Idris Elba, Jamie Hector, John Doman, Michael K. Williams, etc.). There isn't a single bad performance here. If I ever saw Jamie Hector on the street I'd probably pass out with fear. This review is really for the show in it's entirety but the 3rd season is where it reaches its pinnacle, and yet keeps getting better and better. But for the total experiece, start with season one, as many things will be lost on viewers who start later in the storyline. If you appreciate anything that involves sincerity and doesn't pull punches,watch this show. But beware, once you watch it it will stick with you for a long time.