Jake seems to have it all. He’s rich, he’s handsome — he is played by Jude Law, after all — and he’s just opened the hottest new restaurant in New York City. His brother Vince, though, just came back into town with a mountain of gambling debt… and his problems are about to become Jake’s problems. It’s the kind of story we’ve seen a million times before, of course: the good brother and the bad brother. But Netflix’s new drama Black Rabbit somehow makes it work, powered by exceptionally strong performances by Law and Jason Bateman. Even when the story falters under the weight of too many twists, Law and Bateman do everything they can to hold it together.

 

Bateman plays against type here as Vince, a former drug addict with scraggly long hair and an unkempt beard who reaches out to his brother Jake after years of silence when he has nowhere else to turn. It’s a nice change of pace for Bateman, who usually plays straight-arrow do-gooders like Arrested Development’s Michael Bluth, and he’s still charming enough that we can see how Vince has gotten away with his misdeeds for so long. But Jake doesn’t buy his brother’s BS for a second, and their scenes together are Black Rabbit at its best; as they bicker back and forth, we can sense the years of resentment bubbling just below the surface.

 

Co-created by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Zach Baylin (King Richard) and his wife Kate Susman, Black Rabbit plays like a mix of Bateman’s earlier Netflix drama Ozark and The Bear, with an extra layer of gloom on top. (You might be asking: Can it get any gloomier than The Bear? Oh yes, it can!) The tone is persistently grim, in the style of Ozark, with dim, washed-out lighting and bursts of gruesome violence. There’s a sinister, unsettling vibe throughout, never letting you get too comfortable. (Bateman directs several episodes himself, as does his Ozark co-star Laura Linney.)

Jake and Vince’s dynamic might feel like a cliché at first, but it gets more interesting than that. Vince actually had the vision for Jake’s restaurant to begin with, and he makes a sincere effort to reconnect with his tattoo artist daughter Gen, played by Odessa Young. Jake has major skeletons in his closet, too; he’s not exactly squeaky clean. Their desperation starts to climb, Uncut Gems-style, and as things get worse for Jake and Vince, Law and Bateman get even better. Oscar winner Troy Kotsur (CODA) also pops up as deaf crime boss Joe Mancuso, commanding the room without saying a word.

 

Black Rabbit does start out with one of my biggest pet peeves, though: a flash-forward to an exciting and dramatic moment in the future that is then put on pause so we can go back and fill in the backstory. (This highly annoying practice should be banned from all TV shows going forward.) It’s also plagued by confusing time jumps, clunky dialogue that tells rather than shows and plot complications that get too complicated, bordering on overkill. I kept coming back, though, to see more of Law and Bateman. Law expertly lets us see the pressure building behind Jake’s perfect veneer, and Bateman fleshes out Vince into much more than just a stereotypical sleaze. In their complicated relationship, we find the kind of nuance that the rest of Black Rabbit is lacking.

 

Bolu
Website |  + posts

Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.