Review by Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg)— Fans of pin-striped, trash-talking thugs will find bliss in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” which launches Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. New York time. The 12-part series, created by Terence Winter of Sopranos fame and co-directed by Martin Scorsese, is set in 1920s Atlantic City as Prohibition rears its sober head. Steve Buscemi stars as Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, town treasurer, prime thug and a true eel of a man. He’s as comfortable telling a sob-story about eating rats to the weeping ladies of the Temperance Union (who come to life when another speaker hollers “Liquor, thy name’s delirium!”) as he is doing whiskey deals. He goes around in a powder-blue Rolls Royce and dresses to match, though his pencil-sized neck sometimes gets lost in his collar. He and his similarly slick associates like to salt and pepper their bravado with the F-word, which by now is rapidly approaching cliché. The temperance ladies might think of them as dapper vulgarians. Nucky is also an artesian well of shopworn expressions and lame jokes. “First rule of politics,” he tells an associate, is to “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Then there’s “How we gonna keep you down on the farm?” He may have a sharp tongue but he’s lugging around a pretty dull brain. The series starts with the promise of a slaughter afoot but soon enters a sometimes slow-paced segment during which we meet the other principles, including Nucky’s brother and town sheriff Elias (Shea Whigham) and Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), a 22-year-old just home from World War I who says he killed plenty of Germans and soon retrains his sites on the local competition. There’s also Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), a mousy and pregnant temperance enthusiast who, in all fairness, has come to her passion honestly: her husband’s an abusive drunk. She visits Nucky in hopes he’ll give hubby a job, promising “I’ll name my child after you.” The boss man eventually arranges a job of sorts, but not the kind she was expecting. The series features thug movie stalwarts Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), Al Capone (Stephen Graham) and a Caruso-loving Big Jim Colosimo (Frank Crudele), who eventually experiences a graphic act of cranial ventilation. The opener is not excessively violent and sex is rare, though both pick up a bit as the series progresses. The first naked woman we see is a corpse in a funeral home. Later on Nucky has at it with a finely crafted floozy who invokes a rodeo theme, much to the city slicker’s chagrin. When the blood finally flows it does so memorably, especially a scene featuring a shot-gun blast to an unfortunate head. The resulting goo pile may haunt some viewers. There are arresting and sometimes disturbing period touches, including a black-faced brass band and a reverent appraisal of Henry Ford’s “The International Jew” plus some truly strange scenes, including a storefront window through which we watch nurses place infants in incubators and a boxing match between dwarfs who are instructed “no low blows!” Though the opener sometimes drags a bit the series picks up steam as Nucky, who’s been a widower for seven years, takes a liking to the freshly widowed Margaret as Jimmy Darmody and Al Capone build their own empires. Meantime, prohibition agents led by the stern and righteous Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon) try to close the net on Nucky and his fellow vice lords, sometimes employing thuggery that rivals that of the bad guys. While “Boardwalk Empire” won’t likely cause many viewers to forget “The Sopranos” it’s strong enough to hook you. Here’s hoping Nucky ends up in an oil drum.
