If you read us regularly, you'll know that here, we tend to appreciate the content produced by the bitten apple streaming platform. Even on extremely perfectible projects like The Gorge or season 2 of Silo, we always have the feeling of witnessing a real proposal, skillful or clumsy, and not an order from the catalog. That's why we will always advise you, until an exception comes along to confirm the rule, to take at least a look at what Apple TV+ is putting online. And this is still the case with Dope Thief, a new eight-episode series by Peter Craig (The Batman, The Town) with a certain Ridley Scott producing and directing the first episode. We'll go into detail about the why and how, but first, a little history.
Dope Thief is a series inspired by Dennis Tafoya's novel set in the streets of Philadelphia. Yes, like The Wire. Ray and Manny have a scheme that serves as the opening of the show: disguising themselves as fake DEA agents, they raid the homes of small-time dealers to recover money and drugs. They can then resell everything to some sort of sponsor. A seemingly foolproof plan that works thanks in particular to what Ray calls "the voice of command," a way of immediately establishing themselves as the authority figure who leaves their victim no choice, influencing their certainties.
Violating their scope of action, they are put on a job in a small, isolated house in the suburbs near Philadelphia. But it was actually a location chosen to be the nerve center of a trafficking ring bringing together a Mexican cartel, a supremacist biker gang, and a mysterious individual. Everyone will now begin to pursue Ray and Manny, including a real DEA agent, seriously injured while undercover.
1 – Peter Craig and Ridley Scott…
… are not arguments. We were talking about projects that could be improved, and Dope Thief falls squarely into this category. For Ridley Scott, it's easy; not only has his presence as an executive producer never been an established guarantee of quality, but his place in the director's chair of the first episode can be widely questioned, as nothing in said episode bears his mark. For those who haven't paid attention to the director's name in the credits, nothing will catch your attention.
As for Peter Craig, although we feel all his past experience writing stories about small-time criminals, Dope Thief never really stands out. Especially since we often have the impression that the man is on the wrong subject in his approach to his story. The scheme of our two robbers is dispatched too quickly to go around in circles around a seemingly endless fall and the birth of the friendship between Ray and Manny deserved much more than two one-minute flashbacks. This bad direction taken is felt more in the second half of the season (we'll come back to this) where the show will suffer from crude scripting facilities to create a superficial build-up of tension. We go to the end without constraint, but with a strong feeling of déjà vu with all the shows of the same genre that have preceded it.
2 – Brian Tyree Henry (and Wagner Moura)…
is the best reason to watch Dope Thief. The actor from The Eternals, Bullet Train and especially Atlanta continues to prove his talent and here he dominates the entire cast. A central figure in the show, he is not only capable of provoking an emotion even with a seemingly innocuous scene, but he occupies the space to the point where his silence becomes the creator of a thousand expressions. It is thanks to him that the show holds up until the end and we sometimes regret that the script lingers too long away from him, because it is precisely in these moments that his flaws become more visible.
Although he joined the cast somewhat late, following a disagreement with his predecessor, Wagner Moura, the revelation of Narcos and excellent in the recent Civil War, manages to create a great chemistry with Brian Tyree Henry. Their relationship is at the heart of the story and it's in their breaking points that the series really tells something. It's a shame to see Peter Craig not exploit it more.
3 – Dope Thief is worth seeing, at least at the beginning
Like an addition, the two previous points logically lead us to this conclusion: Dope Thief deserves to be given a chance, especially because the first part of the season takes the best directions and gives us the most beautiful scenes. No one will blame you for giving up halfway through, as the weekly release makes it easier to get carried away (we binge-watched the episodes, which made it feel heavier at times).
Dope Thief is one of those series that felt too big, too quickly, like a conclusion somewhere in between, and which wins when it goes off the beaten track and lets its two The main actors put on a show. She has as many reasons to like her as there are to ignore her. As our grandmother would say, you have to taste the dish first before saying you don't like it. So listen to Grandma and try Dope Thief.
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