I wanted so badly for this Netflix series to be good that I sat through both seasons of it.
Story is set in Miami in 1958-59, in one of the premier hotels of Miami Beach, just as the mob loses Cuba to Castro’s revolution. I think they did a good job in evoking the era.
The story had so much potential; At times it even came within reach of it. But in the end, the character of Vera Evans (Olga Kurylenko) sucked so much that it took me out of the moment in almost every scene she appeared. (Somebody needs to revoke her SAG card.)
The rest of the cast was better by various degrees. By far, the best characters were the baddies, Ben Diamond (Danny Huston) and Sy Berman (James Caan).
Rotten Tomatoes gives it 56%. Hardly a ringing endorsement. That said, I’d still recommend it for summer viewing.
I saw it a while ago. It was good enough to watch the whole thing. For me, it would have helped if the characters wore name tags… I’m terrible with faces and you can’t have someone from last episode show up without being named again and expect me to remember who they are.
It was good enough to watch when there was nothing else on, but no midnight urge to do* just one more*. That’s my biggest criticism of it.Maybe that was the characters, or their portrayal at least. I wasn’t rooting for any of them, and I don’t even think any of them were essential to the show.
I think the idea was that each character was broken in some fundamental way and thus not meant to be like-able. That’s really what kept me watching - the fact that even the good guys weren’t really deserving of the ‘good triumphs over evil’ finale.
Yes, I agree mostly. As a fan of shows like Dexter and The Sopranos, I often like flawed characters, but Magic City lacked a Dexter Morgan or Tony Soprano that kept me coming back to learn more about them.