It’s disappointing to report that, contrary to its IMDb page, Treat Williams does not appear in all six episodes of “We Own This City,” George Pelecanos and David Simon’s new HBO miniseries, adapted from the book by Justin Fenton. But the good news is that when he finally does turn up in the penultimate episode, the show has generated such weight that his appearance has the proper power; for an epic saga of police corruption, nothing could feel more like the Pope giving his blessing than a cameo by the star of “Prince of the City.”
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And that 1981 Sidney Lumet film really does feel like the template for “We Own This City,” perhaps more than Simon’s previous work – even “The Wire,” its most obvious point of comparison, to say nothing of the cops-and-dealers angles of “The Corner” or the knotty politics of “Show Me a Hero.” Lumet’s film told the true story of an elite unit of hotshot cops that helped themselves to copious money and contraband in ‘70s-era New York City; this miniseries tells the true story of similar unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, engaging in similar activities in Baltimore in the early 2000s. “Prince of the City” ends with Williams’ disgraced cop addressing a class at the police academy; his character here is also a cop-turned-instructor, who explains, “I teach these kids to be good, honest cops. The rest is up to them.” His message does not appear to be sticking.
The Gun Trace Task Force is led, through much of the story, by Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, a concrete cowboy played with guns-a-blazin’ bravado by Jon Bernthal. When we first meet him, he’s rallying his troops in a semi-reasonable fashion, saying all the right things about getting the job done without busting heads. “Information: that’s what’ll get you cases,” he assures them. “That’s what’ll get you guns and drugs.” But even as he shares his mission statement, director Reinaldo Marcus Green intercuts images of cops on the street, doing the actual work. From the opening frames, even before we know what these cops are up to, the message is clear: in today’s law enforcement environment, nothing is more common than saying one thing and doing another.
The story of Jenkins, his colleague/accomplices, and the scandal surrounding them is a complex one, and is told here in detail; the series was developed (and some episodes were written) by Simon and his frequent collaborator Pelacanos, and their fellow ‘Wire’ writers Ed Burns and William F. Zorzi also contribute. But they’re not just interested in facts – they want to convey the feeling of committing these crimes, the seductiveness, the ease, and most of all, the entitlement. Jenkins has a short but punchy speech where he explains exactly why he feels he should help himself, and while the view is certainly not endorsed, the writers at least attempt to understand it. And best of all, they see these crimes all the way down the line, to the (usually unmentioned) consequences; they’re taking money from people who owe it to other, more powerful people, and “those kind of street debts don’t get forgiven.”
Steeped as it is – both in the source material and the show-runners – in Baltimore, “We Own This City” is haunted by the specter of a single figure, who becomes even more of its subject than Sgt. Wayne Jenkins. The frequent evocation of the name Freddie Gray marks that as a seminal event, a hinge point for the city and its law enforcement, so Simon and crew give us a full-scale dramatization of the Gray protests in April 2015, and note that the indictments following that murder led to a “work slowdown” whose effects are still felt in the city. It’s hard to guess, at least based on the evidence here, if it’s better or worse for Baltimore PD to stop doing their jobs; we have scenes of blatant misconduct and shocking violence, and both are frequently met with fellow officers and/or superiors engaging in solemn reprimands that are quickly revealed as fake-outs, as if there’s nothing funnier than the notion that a rotten cop might be held to account. Being dirty might be lucrative, but it sure does seem exhausting – constantly keeping your stories straight, sneaking around, calling in favors, preparing yourself for the other shoe to drop.
This is, as almost all Simon joints are, an ensemble piece, though it does give Bernthal one of his most substantial roles to date, and he nails it. He has that strangest of dialects, the Baltimore accent, down cold (listen closely to the way he says “pro-moa-ted,” or pronounces the affectionate “hun” like the last name of Kate Hudson’s mom), as well as the dick-swinging swagger of a rock star cop. But it’s not just surface tics; there’s a marvelous scope to the performance, as his character swings from nervous rookie to hot-dogging king shit to scared, trapped punk. He has a few moments of desperation that are quite revealing, chief among them one early in the second episode, just after his arrest, as he tells a prison guard about how they must have realized their mistake by now, that “phone calls are being made,” repeating the story he tells himself as if that might eventually make it true.
Josh Charles is cast marvelously against type as Daniel Hersl, an absolute piece of shit, the worst of the worst of the cops, a violent racist with fifty-plus civilian complaints in his file; he augments the Balty-more accent with a guttural delivery that renders him all but unrecognizable, at least vocally. Similarly effective in an unexpected role is Jamie Hector as Sean Suitor, once a member of the task force and now a respectable, by-the-book homicide detective – a role 180 degrees from Marlo Stanfield, yet just as convincing. His best moments are similarly low-key, but there’s one incredible scene where he hears the charges against his former partners for the first time, hustles to the bathroom, and splashes himself in the face while revisiting key moments in his memory that he now understands. This sounds like total hackery, and it could have been – but his acting is so urgent that it sings.
Like “The Wire,” “We Own This City” doesn’t shy away from the grunt work and monotony of police work – the overlapping circles of various crimes, cops, and agencies; the embedding of shop talk and regional slang in the dialogue (lots of good examples here, but I’ll be saying “ticky-tack nonsense” for a while); and most of all, a dizzying array of supporting characters, plotlines, and intermingling threads. This time around, there’s also sizable structural trickery to contend with, as the story is a told in a hopscotching narrative that leaps from investigations to interviews to flashbacks of events described. (There are lots of “18 months earlier”-type titles.)
All of the episodes are directed by Green (“King Richard”), who does his best to keep the complicated chronology straight, using graphics of police “run sheets” (basically, a notated timesheet for officers) as an organizational device, as well as distinctive looks for the characters’ parallel timeframes. He mostly succeeds, though as with Simon’s previous shows, this is not casual viewing, and viewers who use TV as background while scrolling or doing chores will likely be lost. That’s on them; what’s more pressing is Green’s lack of visual flair, his inability to make the (many, many) scenes of people sitting in rooms talking look like anything more dynamic than people sitting in rooms talking. It’s a tough task, to be sure, but the best directors of “The Wire” figured it out, as did “Show Me a Hero” director Paul Haggis.
Perhaps it’s unfair to dwell on such comparisons, but it’s impossible not to put “We Own This City” up against Simon and his collaborators’ earlier work, not only for the similarities in subject, but in themes; a late scene drills down, Frederick Wiseman-style, into a budget meeting with an incoming mayor, and it plays out like a nutshell summary of their ongoing concerns, as well as all of the issues plaguing budgeting, policing, and city politics today. These are subjects that warrant not only discussion (and certainly not in the bullet-point manner of news and talk shows) but exploration, argument, and meditation. “We Own This City” does all that, and much more besides. [B+]