TL:DR – A poor attempt at creating a police procedural drama with no redeeming qualities whatsoever both technical or creative.
The Bronx. Perhaps the only borough in New York City to go relatively untouched in both TV and Films despite a wealth of talented individuals to emerge from its communities. Individuals like Al Pacino, George Romero, Jennifer Lopez, Billy Joel and Kerry Washington all hail from the Bronx. As a Bronx native and filmmaker, I’m always up for showcasing the interesting look and feel of my borough, so naturally I was intrigued and excited to preview episodes 2, 3 and 5 of the show BRONX SIU, a cop drama premiering on Amazon Prime on July 19th.
Sadly, after watching all 3 of the provided episodes from the series, I can honestly say that any interest I had disappeared in the first 10 minutes. BRONX SIU (Special Investigation Unit) is cop drama series around a task force that deal with difficult and demanding cases from all over NYC. In their own promotional material, the show is described a “superbly paced action thriller” when it’s anything but that. Clunky with a plodding pace, the show just chugs along as it tries to delve into not just the cases, but the personal lives of the lead characters, none of whom are very interesting and just hit every cop drama cliche off the checklist.
Producer and star Brian J. White is Jimmy Blue, SIU lead detective (I think, not a lot was made clear about the actual hierarchy of the team), a former military vet with potential PTSD and a very blatant disregard for the law he’s supposed to enforce. Shanti Lowry is Yolanda, another detective on the task force who struggles with an addiction to both drugs and sex, which comes across less as a means to create genuine drama and more like a something crafted to have Lowry physically perform in as little clothing as possible at random intervals. Ameer Baraka is Darius, the one straight shooter of the crew, and gets a little more to go on with the earnestness his character has to want to do the right thing, but it’s not much and just foreshadows that his arc will end with the character losing at least some of their good nature because that’s what the job does, apparently.
These three lead the ensemble with other side characters who are so forgettable, it’s a surprise to see them pop up ever other episode when they do, with the exception of veteran character actor Miguel A. Nunez as the Task Force Supervisor (again, I think, the storytelling doesn’t make any of the roles and relationships clear). Nunez shows up now and again, but why the actor is getting close to top billing is beyond my understanding. Storylines from the characters personal lives are woven into the cases the SIU must deal with, but none of it actually works from a storytelling aspect. I found the character development to be both overstuffed and still undercooked. Character motivations are either over explained via cringe inducing dialogue or just suddenly happen, but none it actually gels together in a cohesive way, just more spaghetti being thrown at the wall. The leads spend very little time together as a unit and thus no dynamic is ever established and when they are together, everyone just seems to be a variation of each other, no one sticks out in particular.
The actors aren’t helped at all by the poor production value of the show. While it’s nice to have a largely ethnic cast of Black and Latinx actors on screen, it’s also hard to appreciate that diversity when every shot is either over/underexposed. Cinematographer Jason Weary seemed to be struggling to channel their inner David Fincher/Jeff Cronenweth, resulting in awful attempts at moody lighting. One particular scene is made laughable when White’s character, interrogating a perp they just caught on a rooftop at night, says “Don’t you just love the view!” but the entire scene is near pitch dark! I wasn’t even aware that the scene took place on a rooftop until a character action revealed it to be, not even so much as an establishing shot to sell the idea. And the few daytime scenes don’t get much better with overexposure and in one day scene, again underexposure on two of the darker complexion actors that you lose their faces. In fact, the actors faces are lost a lot in shadow a lot in this show and something tells me it wasn’t a creative choice. A majority of the scenes are also shot in medium to tight shots, losing all sense of geography, as well as the more than occasional missed focus shots and bad framing. Since the show has yet to officially debut, here’s hoping a post production fix has happened for those watching via Amazon.
Producer Dan Garcia and Director Mike Mayhall seem eager to create a show on par with Law & Order and CSI, but can’t capture the excitement those shows brought to their audience. Law & Order basically created the procedural formula while still maintaining interesting lead characters, a punchy pace and ripped from the real life headlines plot points. CSI at least had the vision from Jerry Bruckheimer, who wanted to make Forensic Science cool and sexy, if a bit too flashy but it did so successfully for 14 seasons. Even the sadly short lived SOUTHLAND showed the mundane reality of police work and skillfully paired it with the everyday personal hardships of its characters to make a captivating drama. I struggled to get through three episodes of BRONX SIU at one hour a piece. The actual cases themselves aren’t very interesting, each one a murder with convoluted motivations, all of them being solved when the characters enter a space and ALL the evidence they need is sitting on a table or just randomly confessed without the slightest bit of provocation. There’s so little detective work on this show, that I fail to understand why each episode is an hour long when a 30 minute runtime would be much more ideal.
For a show titled BRONX SIU, there seems to be very little of my hometown in it. Every location, both interior and exterior is about as generic as it can get, completely devoid of any of the unique personality the Bronx has. Even aerial transition shots, clearly all stock footage, are of Lower Manhattan, many miles from even the most famous Bronx landmark, Yankee Stadium. Where’s Fordham Road? Or the Grand Concourse? The Bronx Zoo? City Island? These are but a few examples of actual locations in the Bronx. For all of our bluster in wanting proper representation of persons of color on film, should that not also extend to the communities from which they dwell? Authenticity can’t be faked and anyone who has ever met someone from The Bronx knows it.
By the time I reached Episode 5, I basically zoned out and just kept the checking the player to see how much time was left till it was finally over. I suspect a lot of Amazon Prime Video users who start this show will be doing the same.