Binge-r #267: Hawkeye + True Story
New Strings to Your Bows: Hailee Steinfeld (Kate) and Jeremy Renner (Clint) in Hawkeye
HAWKEYE
Streaming Service: Disney+
Availability: All six episodes now streaming
Marvel’s spin-off series on Disney+ are simply named for their lead character, as if that’s all you need to know. Sometimes that’s more than enough (Loki!) And sometimes it’s not (Hawkeye). Jeremy Renner’s assassin with the preternatural archery skills, has been an ever-present supporting player in The Avengers franchise, even if he’s not always essential (he was possessed for half of one film – it wasn’t an issue). Figuring out what to do with him as a solo act isn’t easy: gruffness is his defining quality, his quiver is purely for arrows. In what will be a six-part limited series created by Jonathan Igla (Mad Men), Hawkeye and his off-duty alter-ego Clint Barton try on a handful of personas and genres. If anything makes the show interesting it’s that variety. As a blank slate Hawkeye has possibilities.
The setting is New York and it’s the festive season – Rat Pack on the soundtrack in the same way Die Hard did, which is a nod to the title character’s exasperated dad energy. Clint is first seen at a musical celebrating another Avenger, which is one of many juicy digs that could actually have been built upon. He wants to have holiday season fun with his children, but the reappearance of an artefact from his chequered past puts him in the awkward company of Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), a Hawkeye fan and budding vigilante. “Could you sign my bow?” she asks him, and the mood gets a decent kick from Steinfeld’s now patented geeky, over-enthusiastic teen persona (she does a lot more in Apple TV+’s underseen Dickinson [full review here]). The two are soon fighting a Russian crime gang, but no goons are killed in the making of this story – it’s a mild black comedy, not an action-thriller.
There’s a lot going on with Kate’s widowed mother, Eleanor (Vera Farmiga), and her telenovela fiancé Jack Duquesne (Tony Dalton), but unfortunately Hawkeye passes up the chance to spotlight Linda Cardellini as Clint’s wife, Laura. Cardellini makes every show she’s in better (have you seen Netflix’s Dead to Me? [full review here]), but here she’s literally down the other end of the phone at home. It’s emblematic of a narrative that wants to mess with your expectations, but is too timid to fully embrace the potential. At one point Hawkeye has to enter a fantasy role-playing game, but what should be ludicrously funny merely unfolds with tepid predictability. “I fought Thanos” he sighs, but Renner’s aptitude for self-deprecating humour only goes so far. Subsequent episodes might add extra wrinkles and notable interlopers, but I’m not convinced Hawkeye does enough to be a headline act.
City of Brotherly Love: Wesley Snipes (Carlton) and Kevin Hart (Kid) in True Story
TRUE STORY (Netflix, all seven episodes now streaming): In this limited series thriller created by Eric Newman (Narcos), boisterous comic superstar Kevin Hart goes looking for dramatic gravity and sometimes finds it. In an autobiographical pivot he plays Kid, a famous comedian whose professional obligations run through his hometown of Philadelphia, where a raucous night out with his older brother, Carlton (Wesley Snipes), ends with the pair trying to cover-up a crime. The further the plot goes the thinner the show gets, relying on unlikely coincidences and some clichéd supporting roles, but it’s good in capturing the uneasy realities of Kid’s success, where he sometimes feels that he’s held captive by those depending on him. Carlton, who Kid periodically bails out, is the most complex of those relationships, and Snipes gives a striking, soulful performance where grace and gratitude are bent by years of compromise. Hart will get the guarded praise for widening his talents, as the likes of Jim Carrey did before him, but the real story here is the continued re-emergence of Snipes. He looks ready for a defining role.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Top End Wedding (2019, 102 minutes) warmly hits all the necessary marks as a wedding-bound romantic comedy updated for an Indigenous voice by co-writer and star Miranda Tapsell and director Wayne Blair; The Little Things (2021, 127 minutes) is a strained crime drama where Denzel Washington and Rami Malek’s Californian cops investigate Jared Leto’s suspect for murder and over-acting.
New on SBS on Demand: Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) is one of the most interesting directors in Hollywood today, and with the menacing, regret-laden crime-thriller Destroyer (2018, 116 minutes), she was able to draw one of Nicole Kidman’s finest performances as a compromised police detective dealing with the failings of her own past and a daughter inexorably slipping away.
New on Stan: An unsettling psychological drama that exists in the lead-up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Nitram (2021, 112 minutes) is a portrait of alienation and despair from filmmaker Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) and lead actor Caleb Landry Jones; Dunkirk (2017, 107 minutes) is probably the most pared-down movie Christopher Nolan will make, a series of World War II timelines converging on a besieged French beach and Tom Hardy’s eyes.
>> Missed the last BINGE-R? Click here to catch up on Netflix’s pithy anime adaptation Cowboy Bebop and Amazon’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time.
>> Want BINGE-R sent to your inbox? Click here for the weekly e-mail.
>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 352 series reviewed here, 162 movies reviewed here, and 42 lists compiled here.
