Boardwalk Empire
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
Atlantic City, 1920, and the rum running machine is humming. Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi, quiet and terrifying in a felt hat) runs the city the way a pit boss runs a floor: everyone is cheating, and he lets them, because he owns the house. Terence Winter’s pilot, directed by Martin Scorsese, opens the show with a murder nobody will ever be punished for, and that is the entire thesis in one scene.
What separates Boardwalk Empire from the prestige crime pack it debuted beside is period texture as argument. The historical figures (Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein) arrive as ambitious young men doing auditions for their own legends, and the show lets them be small before it lets them be famous. Margaret Thompson’s arc from hostage of the marriage to something harder than any of the men is the best slow burn on the lot, and Nucky’s nephew Jimmy is the most convincing portrait of a man being ruined by his own hero worship that decade produced.
The first two seasons are close to flawless; season three sags before the fourth and fifth find a meaner, faster gear and a proper ending. Boardwalk Empire deserves its reputation and carries one modest warning: it earns its slow stretches.
Our score: 9/10.
