A MAN IN FULL REVIEW: JEFF DANIELS DELIVERS UTTERLY UNHINGED PERFORMANCE AS TRUMP-CODED WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINAL, BUT HE DESERVED A BETTER SHOW
A farcical sendup of the rich and famous that loses its satirical edge in real time, Netflix’s A Man in Full gives Jeff Daniels more to chew on than a hotel buffet, but lacks the all-consuming appetite of his performance. Created by the prolific David E Kelley, the six-episode miniseries is based on The Bonfire of the Vanities author Tom Wolfe’s novel of the same name — a tonally fluid story about half-a-dozen characters whose lives intersect in the sprawling city of Atlanta, Georgia.
If nothing else, it’ll be remembered for being the rare Hollywood project that actually warrants being produced in the popular shooting hub, which has hosted most major Marvel movies in recent years. But although there isn’t a superhero in sight here, Daniels certainly plays his character — the crumbling real estate mogul Charlie Croker — with the sort of unchecked braggadocio that one might associate with big muscles and tight spandex. Charlie is an obnoxious man, who is informed in the first episode that the banks have lost all patience with his habitually fraudulent ways. Charlie owes them upwards of $1 billion. And although he probably knew this already, having this information yelled at him in a boardroom environment effectively brings him to his knees and invites the vultures to begin circling.
Among these vultures is a bullish banker played by Bill Camp, and his weaselly executive, played by Tom Pelphrey. The show devotes considerable time to their machinations, while also introducing another parallel plot line. This one involves a young Black man named Conrad, who, in a fit of stupidity, assaults a crooked police officer during a traffic altercation and lands up in jail. Conrad’s wife works for Charlie, who assures her that he will deploy his top lawyer to sort this mess out. While it initially seems like he’s making false promises — at this stage, you don’t think highly of him — it is eventually revealed that Charlie actually wants to help.
And this is where the show begins to get sidetracked. Having begun as a Succession-style dark comedy about wealth and power, A Man in Full starts resembling, of all things, a redemption tale. Nobody could’ve seen it coming, but by the time the second half of the series rolls around, you’re actively rooting for Charlie to come out alive. Sure, he yells a lot and has little time for his teenage son and second wife, but he seems to genuinely care about them both. He also has a rather cordial relationship with his first wife, Martha, played by the overqualified Diane Lane.
In addition to skewering the one-percent, A Man in Full skewers the idea of masculinity itself. While Charlie locks horns with the bankers in a series of tense (and humorous) confrontations — “It’s a very sad day when a duke of bombast tumbles to the reality that at day's end, he’s nothing but an empty sack,” Camp’s character seethes at him in one memorable scene — Conrad’s pride gets him a quick stint at a correctional facility for violent criminals. And in a scene that would’ve benefitted from smarter, more self-aware writing and direction, Conrad's long-suffering wife declares - with a straight face, mind you - that he belongs to the school of Stoicism. But the show reduces him to somebody who prefers solving his problems through violent means.
Charlie, on the other hand, unleashes violence of a different kind. Ego is his biggest weapon. He can probably do more harm with his words than he can with his body, although we’re repeatedly reminded that he was some kind of star athlete in college. But that was in the past; these days, Charlie appears to positively be leaking testosterone as he walks in and out of conference rooms, perpetually jacked on caffeine and with the speech patterns of Foghorn Leghorn. In one scene, he wrestles a rattle snake to prove a vague point. Later, he gets himself a walking stick, but instead of symbolising his declining power, it only adds to his colourful aura. He was a cantankerous oaf before, but now he's a cantankerous oaf with a walking stick. It's a borderline cartoonish performance, but one that feels entirely disconnected from the toothlessness that A Man in Full finds itself defaulting to.
Perhaps the biggest mistake that the show makes is to become the very thing that it is supposed to mock. There’s a reason why women are reduced to lampposts in this story — a mayoral candidate openly politicises a three-decade-old rape in order to win a campaign — but the show doesn't appear to notice this. It comes across as something that is sidelining the women not to prove a point, but because it actually doesn't want to pay any attention to them. And so, when Conrad’s wife weeps for the sixth time in six episodes, you feel for her, but you don’t question the show for snatching away her agency. A Man in Full also doesn’t underline (or, in fact, recognise) the irony of a Black man being sent to prison for defending himself, while a white-collar (white) criminal continues to make a mockery of the system with the same disregard that he probably had for it as a child.
Who knows, his parents might have even told him that he could be president one day. And having lived through the Donald Trump years, it isn’t a stretch to imagine somebody like Charlie being elected to office. But A Man in Full appears to miss noticing these parallels as well, settling instead for a milquetoast climax that doesn’t dare cross the boundaries of good taste, even though the premise practically begs for it to be as badly behaved as its characters.
A Man in Full
Creator - David E Kelley
Cast - Jeff Daniels, Diane Lane, Tom Pelphrey, Bill Camp, Aml Ameen, Jon Michael Hill
Rating - 2.5/5
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2024-05-04T03:38:24Z dg43tfdfdgfd