A Man in Full
Seated amongst the television genres I adore, Jeff Daniels indulging in business while jawsome chewing does indeed rank high. He seems to carry the studious and the charismatic in every character he enacts whether he is a newscaster as in “The Newsroom” or an investigator as in “American Rust.” David E. Kelley is something else as he portrays Daniels in a new light in the “A Man in Full” where he takes the very caricature of Chicago-based savage capitalism as Charlie Croker who is an Atlanta real estate bastard as colonel Sanders meets Logan Roy albeit the Croker does not even have a farthing in his bank account. Not that Daniels and a couple of other actors ‘performers’ manage to redeem “A Man in Full” from mediocrity. Alas, even the most talented of directors such as Regina King and Thomas Schlamme, do not manage to prevent this mundane social class drama from stigma ‘mediocrity.’
‘A Man in Full’ When adjusted for modern sensibilities takes inspiration from a Tom Wolfe novel published in the same name in 1998, “A Man in Full.” “A Man in Full” pulls emphasis on Southern Baptist Croker (Daniels), living in the same extravagant life of other fictitious business moguls and real ones gallivanting in individuals jets, married to a younger woman (Sarah Jones) and most importantly, wasting out money in oceans rather than banks for who has the need to repay any loans?
After a lavish 60th birthday celebration where he entertained his closest aristocratic business friends with none other, but Shania Twain performing some of her greatest hits for a wild cameo, the bank comes a-knocking and asking for his loan money back in fact for a huge sum, $800 Million.
A little while after the parties are over, Croker visits the Planners Bank. His adversary Harry Zale (of ultimate fight career Bill Camp) defeats him and informs that he is already bankrupt and needs return the debt he owes. In one of those boardrooms is an ex-prodigy, n0w a loan officer Raymond Peepgrass (a captivating Tom Pelphrey) who has a grudge against Croker. He tries to overcome mounting problems and find investors for his colossus business.
Amidst all these is an election period for the mayors, in the case of Croker, it is the summer period that plays witness his negatives alongside a former business associate who has decided to go against Wes for the second term.
At the very most, Croker expects to have his corporate attorney Roger White (Aml Ameen) by his side but instead, Croker orders Roger to assist his secretary, Jill Hensley (Chanté Adams) in a controversial case involving her peace keeper husband Conrad (Jon Michael Hill), who is imprisoned for attacking an abusive police officer over a petty vehicular offense that eventually winds him up in a rough juvenile prison.
I settled down to experience “A Man in Full,” for it seemed the closest alternative filler to the void left by “Succession” that I have been yearning for since the drama left the air. What a disappointment it was; it is not anywhere close to that. Conceptually, this reminds me of a “House of Cards” and “The Chi” mash up only this time set in Georgia as Kelley’s meandering scrutiny of the class divide in working class Atlanta versus the elite is no big deal or interesting in any way. Kelley intersperses the trial with a few humorous incidents which I found from my research were in Wolfe’s book. Examples include Croker attempting to impress an investor by demonstrating horse breeding on his plantation. Even so, these funnier scenes always seemed to come out of nowhere and were never integrated into the rest of the rather harrowing story about the state of the American legal system and the experiences of black men, which stayed rather uncomfortably close to the real world.
Kelley’s treatment of these societal problems has become such a flawed exercise due to a glaring proliferation of characters, most of whom in the end do not really contribute any edge or vividness to a story that is too realistic at best.
Although he definitely carries a strong sense of dramatic sensibility to his character creation, still as a writer he combines too many relevant, contemporary themes with bears of surrealism, which makes the vision less clear than it could be.
To keep the series timeline relevant and aim at “A Man in Full”’s novel’s publication, which is so much organic US fiction and based on US politics during the 1990s the Western (white) agrarian background and the emerging understanding of justice system’s anti Black tendencies were colliding, the series seeks ways to expound these social phenomena in the present time and place. However, what Kelly does in this regard is, for themselves and for the very few associated with peole who get normal care, bringing its psychology to the conflict of ordinary haves and have-nots. From the very beginning the atmosphere of the writing makes you believe that the characters are existing in the readers’ knowledge from several long years, the enactors in the talks ignore the efforts made by inner contacts. It is not settled how Croker fits into those he is with, which gives rise to artificial low tension high stakes battles.
Ameen is the mini-series most dominant link, where he gives an interesting and fiery performance being the only quite captivating character. What started as a simple favor for Croker later turns into something more. As the case of Conrad presents more challenges, he finds himself evolving into a criminal justice lawyer, channeling all his energy into getting Conrad out of this system.
The king directed episodes that indulge these areas, are shot within such brutal realism that it exhausts all the money strength plots by making them seem routine. These intrigued me more than, for example, other petty storylines of the show the re-election of the mayor or Peepgrass’ twisted ascent to replace Croker and other trivial moments of his miserable existence.
However, it is at the end of the last one that one would think it is a series of such a marquee line with a significant such figure like Daniels and such a significant Daniels but there is little to relish Daniels. He’s got a nice gravelly, Southern accent that is quite persuasive and it is easy to be swept away by his frequent charm. Sadly, he’s but a tiny dot inside this expansive yet still evergreen portrait of Atlanta that could normally seem not that overfilled with stuff.
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