Boardwalk Empire Season 3 Box Set Blu-Ray Review
Boardwalk Empire really hit its stride in the second season. It was one of the best stand alone season’s I have ever seen. In fact, it was so good, the show could have ended there. The first episode of this third season is a great start but soon the season goes slightly off the rails.
Boardwalk still has exceptional production values and is possibly the best looking show on television, with an astonishing cast led brilliantly by Steve Buscemi but this is not enough. You need to have a gripping story you believe in, and while the story here in the third season is gripping, its hardly believable.
Usually as a show goes on everything slows down. Whether its following Meadow go to collage in season three and four of the Sopranos, or introducing Brian Cox as a theatre man in Deadwood’s third season. Terrance Winter, the creator and head writer of Boardwalk, clearly wants to say that his show is not going to slow down in any fashion. The action and the body count is raised dramatically. The gang war that ensues causes deaths of people in triple figures and frankly its hard to swallow. If the show goes on to include the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre where seven people died, it will feel like a non-event.
The show introduces a new villain in the shape of Bobby Cannavale’s Gyp Rosetti. Its a fantastic performance of a great character, someone who makes Joe Pesci’s former gangster characters seem level headed. The problem is that he feels like a Bond villain, the new big bad for our hero to defeat. There are already so many characters and plot strands to follow that introducing this major new character is a little distracting. In fact Michael Shannon’s ever watchable mad, now former, prohibition officer simply disappears in the last few episodes and we don’t get a satisfying conclusion to his story.
The show is still one of the best on television but hopefully it can pull the reins back in the next season and get back to telling its wonderful story without the amount of murder and chaos of Saving Private Ryan.
3.5 Stars
Harry Davenport
Rating: 15
DVD/BD Release Date: 5th August 2013 (UK)
Creator: Terence Winter
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Kelly Macdonald, Michael Shannon, Bobby Cannavale
Buy Boardwalk Empire Season 3: [DVD]
