#SHOW ME A HERO DAVID SIMON FULL#

On the other, there are the small, tender scenes between mothers and sons, and neighbours showing concern, that shine far brighter for their naturalism. On the one hand, there are angry mobs, men with rolled-up shirt sleeves and clenched fists, and multiple finger-pointing “Fuck you!”s. Her performance is perhaps the most didactic initially, but it’s Keener, so of course she portrays the gradual softening of her character with a true artist’s skill. In episode two, Catherine Keener arrives as local activist Mary Dorman, playing the white-haired suburbanite in a quilted gilet as though reading directly from a book on US housing policy. Paul Haggis’s direction for all six episodes shows his usual restraint and good judgment, except where some of those government scenes are concerned the white men talking in brown rooms usually escalates into shouty wang-waving or they are drowned out by an angry mob, baying for mayoral blood. It’s a symphonic work, returning several times to an increasingly poignant refrain on its journey to an achingly melancholic end. I find these harder to lose myself in.īy anyone’s standards, Show Me a Hero is a thoughtful, balanced, subtly structured piece of writing.

He embroiders a richly textured quilt, but alongside the small domestic scenes, he adds some incongruously operatic ones, set in city hall. His super power is his feeling for the disadvantaged in any situation. But, as always with Simon’s nuanced take on a subject, it’s more complicated than that. Tower-block dwellers hope for a better place to bring up their kids, while the middle-class folks clutch their pearls and fret about crime rates.

When we join him, Wasicsko is a self-styled voice of the (white) people, campaigning against the allocation of social housing in an affluent area of Yonkers.

#SHOW ME A HERO DAVID SIMON FULL#

It’s one hell of a meaty buffet, which only very occasionally turns to full ham smörgåsbord when the wise-guy shoulder acting gets a bit Bugsy Malone. He charms his way into the race, picking up girlfriend Nay (Carla Quevedo) on the way, supported by old government friend Vinni Restiano (Winona Ryder), and set against a host of elder statesmen played by the likes of Jim Belushi and Alfred Molina. Oscar Isaac plays Nick Wasicsko, a young, fiercely ambitious local politician with his sights set on the mayor’s office.

Show me a hero david simon