Oh, brother!
“You’re a degenerate, and I’m a fake,” is how ambitious restaurateur Jake Friedkin (Jude Law) levels with his irresponsible shaggy-dog sibling Vince (Jason Bateman) in a pot-fueled moment of candor. They cofounded the hip downtown New York City eatery-club Black Rabbit, which doubles as the title of Netflix’s gripping yet exasperating and criminally overlong eight-part thriller.
The series opens in crisis mode, with Jake and a crowd full of Black Rabbit revelers held at gunpoint during a violent armed robbery. Cue the “one month earlier” card as the series plays back over several episodes the events that led to this harrowing moment, triggered by the return to the Big Apple of prodigal brother Vince, who’s ducking dangerous debtors and plunging everyone in his orbit, most particularly the apoplectic Jake, down a rabbit hole of peril.
Vince’s timing couldn’t be worse because Jake is a hustler on the move, looking to expand his hospitality footprint uptown. The last thing he needs is this gambling-addicted born loser, who aptly describes himself as a “one-man pandemic.” The unkempt Bateman, who directs the first two episodes (his Ozark co-star Laura Linney directed the third and fourth), is so convincing as this miserable leech that you wonder why anyone gives this sheepish black sheep the time of day, let alone the $140 grand he owes. “I didn’t budget for you,” Jake whines. Who could?
In what serves as a mission statement for the entire series, scary deaf mobster Mancuso (Troy Kotsur, an Oscar winner for CODA) signs, “We don’t choose our own families.” That sentiment applies to his own hapless son, Junior (Forrest Weber), an overstimulated wannabe gangster he’d just as soon disown, but instead sics him and another goon on the Friedkin bros. Blood is thicker than logic in this melodrama.
Each episode’s opening credits features a series of drawings foreshadowing the next turns of the plot, a gimmick that Bateman’s Ozark also employed. I’m not sure inviting comparisons to that superior crime drama was wise.
Black Rabbit, Limited Series Premiere (eight episodes), Thursday, September 18, Netflix
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