CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!
Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good
Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to what it was like to watch it for the first time.
rahulgreenday8 Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. The entire point behind the series is to show the fallibility of modern day's heroes. Nick Wasicsko is a well meaning politician who is much of a hero within his head. Luck changes for him very frequently and most of the time he is on a roller coaster ride. His inability to look beyond himself and giving himself the credit for victories and failures of others proves to be his downfall. The other part of the screenplay is focused upon the larger picture and viability of innovative social engineering and with how much pain and effort it can be achieved. It also shows the dichotomy between justice and popular politics in this scenario. The plot, characters, screenplay are raw and authentic and sort of inspiring. Good job HBO!
Camoo Against the tidal wave of television series released since 'the Wire' first premiered almost ten years ago, Show me a Hero quietly aims for the head and makes very few compromises to its trajectory. A show like this is way more content to jog its way steadily towards the finish line ahead of a pack of exhausted red faced sprinters who run out of steam well before the race is over. It knows that a story this fascinating but also so full of bureaucratic nitty gritty and highbrow social commentary can't start out the gate sprinting - it needs to build, and to grow, and to settle in your heart and your head in order to make its case for greatness. And it has nothing to prove. Much like the Wire and Treme, the payoff will come to those who wait it out, and unfortunately the series will probably suffer (or enjoy, depending on how you look at it) the same fate as those aforementioned shows because of it. A core group of loyal fans will stay with it from day one, and then countless other attention deficit disordered viewers will tune out until after the series has aired will come back to it later and wonder why the hell they waited so long to watch it. Oscar Isaacs is phenomenal here, I would count this as his best work on anything, television or film or otherwise. He creates a complicated, conflicted character who gradually comes to tragic grips with his role as mayor presiding over a controversial housing development in Yonkers in the 1980's with a subtleness that I'm not sure many other actors would have delivered. Even my description doesn't really pay his character justice, it is never really made clear if he ever did grasp the importance of his political stand when he was in office. I'm not sure that is really the point. The point seems to be more that institutions can tower over men who think they control them, and that they do eventually have the power to affect positive change, in the same way that Simon's previous series showed us that institutions can be cold and inhospitable to anything but failure. The show has a wonderful cast, and a lot of 'oh wow, I haven't seen that guy in AGES' moments - in roles that often play against type, and give these actors a lot of thoughtful, intelligent dialogue to work with. And finally Paul Haggis. I haven't been the biggest fan of his work in the past, but paired with David Simon's wonderful naturalistic dialogue the directing feels masterful here, less gritty, more evocative than the Wire but stripped of the over the top melodrama found in Haggis's other work. There's a restraint here that I really appreciate. I hope those people who might have tuned out after the first episode pick it up again. Show me a Hero is completely worth your full attention.
Charles Herold (cherold) I had such high hopes for this show. Creator/director Paul Haggis is a brilliant guy who has created shows like Due South and The Black Donnellys. The show is written by the folks behind The Wire. The subject of the integration battles of the 1980s seems like a good subject for a series.Alas, I only made it through the first episode, which was remarkably slow moving. I kept thinking something would happen that would explain why I should care, but nothing did. A somewhat smarmy guy runs for mayor, boosted by his mild opposition towards a desegregation plan that has white folks up in arms. This is inter-cut with scenes of people of color in bad neighborhoods, but nothing in the first episode ties them to the main story in any way at all. I'm sure they connect eventually, but their stories aren't inherently interesting, so the entire episode has a "so what?" quality to it.The first episode of a mini-series needs to sell you on watching the rest of it, and this one in no way did that. I find the positive reviews for this inexplicable. Perhaps it gets better later, but I was given no reason to find out.
nil24 First let me just say, if you enjoyed season 4 and 5 of "The Wire", then you're absolutely going to love this. It has exactly the same raw and authentic feeling to it, but then again it's written and produced by David Simon who incidentally also played a big part in making "The Wire", so that's expected.Everything from the stellar cast, who include Oscar Isaac, James Belushi and Winona Ryder among others, to the production is great, and the story is extremely captivating. or at least the performance of the actors make it so.The show is based on true events. Namely the controversial low- income housing project which a federal judge had mandated the city of Yonkers, NY to build, in white middle-class areas in 1987. Do not be fooled by the seemingly dull premise, this is television at its best! The major themes tackle racism and segregation, an extremely relevant issue in the states to this day. It is actually quite appalling to watch the Yonkers city citizens debate on the issue, as it's clear that prejudice and racism are the reasons no one wants low-income housing in their respective districts. In other words, the show puts a very real and ugly face on the still existing racism in America. It follows Nic Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac), a young member of the city council, who suddenly finds himself elected Mayor in a race he was supposed to have lost (A character quite similar to The Wire's Tommy Carcetti, played by Aidan Gillen). - and his handling of the controversial political issue. This may sound boring, but it's actually the exact opposite. This is an Emmy material series!
