Everybody’s new favorite character actor Brian Tyree Henry earns a rough and raw but often tongue-in-cheek star vehicle with “Dope Thief,” an Apple TV series about dope thieves who steal from the wrong crime boss.
It’s violent, with the threat of more violence piling up with most every suspenseful minute. Bystander violence, “collateral damage” in the city (Philadelphia), even Amish violence.
Because the MO of these two longtime pal/dope thieves is that they storm into crack houses and dealer operations as DEA agents.
They’re putting on a “show,” flashing badges and barking in their best “COMMAND” voices, waving guns around like they’ve been doing it all their lives. But they haven’t.
“Dope Thief” is about what happens when you screw up, your bluff is called and doom is one burner phone call away or that next biker who pulls up in front of your house. It’s a dark, bloody thriller with action comedy “put up or get shut-up time” touches. And Henry is a hoot in it.
We meet Ray and Manny (Henry and co-star Wagner Maura) in a classic stake out — an older Chevy van parked down the street from a street dealer’s porch. But something is off about these guys with DEA caps and jackets, bullet proof vests and binoculars.
They joke around a lot, even for “careless” cops/agents. They mock the “children” they’re watching, and mock them more when they storm in on them, walkie talkies on their belts, shotgun/Glock in hand.
“Think of this as like a fire drill like they teach you in school,” Ray bellows in his most commanding voice. Cooperate, he warns as he zip ties assorted teen dealers and users. A quick rummage for cash and contraband, and “backup” is summoned from outside as they head for the door.
But there is no “back up.” This is their gig, robbing from “nobodies,” predators preying on predators.
“We just take our cut from the chaos,” Ray Robin-Hood-rationalizes. “Everybody has to pay the karma tax,” Manny reasons.
Their rationales are nothing they share with family. Ray lives with the old streetwise hardcase (Kate Mulgrew) who raised him, telling her he makes his living “painting houses” in Philly. Who knows what lies Manny tells?
But flashbacks give us glimpses of Ray’s guilty past, and there are other hints that he and Manny — whom he met in prison — have addiction issues.
And for all Ray’s prep, “recon,” “direction” and notes — The ‘show’ has got to be impeccable!” — their impulse control issues get the best of them. Another ex-con joins them and talks them into an out of town attack on a meth lab.
Blood is spilled and bodies must be burned. A big score? Sure. But within moments of starting their getaway, they know the jig is up. They will have to be a lot smarter and a lot sharper with firearms if they’re going to survive the “command voice, real deal” serious gang leader they hear by walkie talkie or phone as he and his biker minions close in on them.
The scripts in this Peter Craig created (he wrote most of the episodes) series, based on a Dennis Tafoya novel, play up the humor in this overfamiliar “We got the wrong dude’s money” scenario.
Ray bickers with the intransigent woman (Mulgrew is a laugh a minute) who raised him, exchanges bitter banter with his old man (Ving Rhames, outstanding), who’s still in prison, gets caught weeping at his impending fate by his dad’s lawyer (Nesta Cooper), who figures self-absorbed-Ray’s upset about his father’s plight.
The series, like Ray, relies on what feel like Acts of God to escape many a scrape.
The shootouts are realistically clumsy and bloody. A foot chase through narrow city streets has a moving truck payoff that’s grim and just plain hilarious.
Henry lurches from pathetic to cunning to comically inept with the greatest of ease as Ray. He comes off as studious, doing his homework and “recon” on planned jobs. Then he seems careless. Repeatedly.
But a red letter moment is when he gets mixed up with a fellow con/gang leader and they bicker about philosophers from Hobbes to Nietzsche to Sun Tzu and one impulsively hurls the other into a firefight.
“Narcos” veteran Maura plays Manny as the more stable and sensible of the two, until he isn’t. Not at all.
Mulgrew relishes another chewy “Orange is the New Black” character from the dark side.
Idris DeBrand plays not-that-innocent Ray in flashbacks to his youth — drug abuse, a girlfriend, and something happened.
Dustin Nguyen is the unsentimental and wealthy Vietnamese immigrant they rely on to “move” their ill-gotten gains.
And Marin Ireland portrays a shooting victim of that raid-gone-wrong who is furious with the interlopers, and silenced by her neck wound as she plots her own revenge and works her own agenda.
“Whoever they were,” she types-to-text to the cops in the hospital, “they started a war.“
Ridley Scott crisply directed the premiere episode, and every installment of this compact (by streaming standards) thriller features flashbacks that flesh in a couple of the characters’ back stories, and pretty much every episode ends with a climax that doubles as a cliffhanger.
It’ll keep you going as Henry makes it easy to put yourself in his shoes — “gifted” with an unexpected haul of cash that may get him, his loved ones and maybe a lot of biker/drug lord henchmen killed, even if he tries to give it back.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, profanity
Cast: Brian Tyree Henry, Wagner Maura, Nesta Cooper, Marin Ireland,
Dustin Nguyen, Kate Mulgrew and Ving Rhames.
Credits: Created by Peter Craig, based on a novel by Dennis Tafoya.
An Apple TV+ release.
Running time: 8 episodes @:44-55 minutes each.
Movie Nation 