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The Westies review – this violent New York mob drama is like Peaky Blinders meets The Sopranos
Expect bloody chaos in this drama about a real-life 80s Irish-American gang â featuring JK Simmons as a gang leader â and their dealings with an Italian-American crime family
The Peaky Blinders effect lingers on. More than a decade after Tommy Shelbyâs debut, TV still loves a real-life gangster crew, especially with Blinders creator Steven Knight having recently repeated the based-on-truth trick with A Thousand Blows. What other IRL historical crime crews are still available? All this time, the Westies, an Irish-American gang operating in 1980s New York in a fractious alliance with the Italian-American Gambino crime family, were right there. Itâs the Irish mafia and the actual mafia in a two-for-one deal.
In ‘The Westies,’ Chris Brancato Expands His ‘Scumbag Universe’ (Again)
For his new series, the co-creator of “Narcos” and “Godfather of Harlem” turns his focus to a violent gang of Irish New Yorkers in the early 1980s.
For his new series, the co-creator of “Narcos” and “Godfather of Harlem” turns his focus to a violent gang of Irish New Yorkers in the early 1980s.
“I consider myself in charge of the scumbag universe,” the writer Chris Brancato said with a laugh last week over coffee. “Any criminal group of any sort that emanates out of New York is fair game for me to try to fictionalize.”
Strictly speaking, he was selling himself short. For the past few decades, his scumbags have come also from Medellín, Colombia (“Narcos”); Guadalajara, Mexico (“Narcos: Mexico”); and Miami (“Hotel Cocaine”), among other places. (It wasn’t the inevitable path for someone whose first writing credit came on “Beverly Hills, 90210.”)
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‘The Westies’ Review: J.K. Simmons and Titus Welliver Lead MGM+’s Handsome but Generic Gangster Drama
The series about the conflicts within and between Irish and Italian crime organizations in 1980s New York hails from 'Narcos' and 'Godfather of Harlem' co-creator Chris Brancato.
On a textual level, MGM+’s The Westies is all about people who refuse to abide by the rules. Within the Irish and Italian criminal organizations of 1980s New York, low-level gangsters threaten rivals they’ve been explicitly instructed to leave alone. Mid-level ones deal drugs under the noses of bosses who’ve forbidden them. The best-laid plans are derailed by impulsive outbursts of anger or fear.
On a metatextual level, however, the entire season is an eight-hour exercise in coloring within the lines, without so much as a bit of snazzy shading to offer the illusion of depth. Despite a pair of decent lead turns from J.K. Simmons and Titus Welliver, the best that can be said of the latest gang drama from Chris Brancato and Michael Panes (Godfather of Harlem) is that it’s too competent to be unbearable, even if it’s also too unimaginative to be interesting.
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