Sons of Anarchy

2008-2014

Listen here, while reading

Charming, Northern California.  Population 14,679

Here you can find the Headquarters of the motorcycle club with the name Sons of Anarchy and the acronym SAMCRO (Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original) Sam Crow.

If you attempt to find this city in any map, paper or Google, your effort will be in vain. 
This city is ... custom made; designed by its creator Kurt Sutter; a fictional   location for a revolutionary television series, which premiered on September 3 2008 on the American cable channel FX and continued, gaining momentum, for  seven seasons.

If you don't know anything about it , now it' s the time: The Reaper is out to get you 

With characters larger than life -and death, a gang / family / herd / bikers club/ Harley Davidson and open road addicts, very far from the romantic version of Easy Rider (1969) - who chose to  live outside the system or rather mock the system, with their own -very convenient- rules, morals, ethics and dress codes, a perverted form of matriarchal  family with roots in the ancient Greek and  Shakespearian tragedy, this anarchistic series can be loved or hated, but it certainly cannot be ignored.

The story in a nutshell: 

The "Sons" lawfully maintain the auto mechanic shop under the trade name "TELLER-MORROW" but their real activities  are illegal and extend from gun-running to porn production, providing protection to the local businessmen, bribery, favors exchanging, corruption and  smuggling, but they are also the keepers of  peace and security in the city, in close co-operation with the Chief of the local police department, keeping away not only drug dealers and rival gangs but also the interests and interventions of any ambitious entrepreneur and developer.

The protagonist, is the vice president of the club, Jackson  "Jax"  Teller , the son of John Teller , one of the original  9  co-founders of the club, who was killed in a motorcycle accident  and Gemma, John's widow and now wife of the current president and co-founder Clay Morrow. 

Jax discovers the lost diary of his father and with it the ideology behind the creation of the club. 
He starts having doubts about his own role and becomes frustrated with the way his father's   vision was distorted. 

His disappointment for the way the club is now runned,   is not shared by his adoptive father Clay nor his mother.

And as if all that was not enough, Jax must now face the birth of his son by his -former drug addict- girlfriend, the arrival of his first love, the pediatric surgeon (!) Tara, and the new enemies of the club, who try, by any means, to dominate the region.

All this and much more happens during the first season alone. Still the series really take off in season  2.

The cast consists of both new and veteran actors, with the latter stealing the show.

Queen   of the "royal family" of the Sons  and  Jax's mother, is the awesome Katey Sagal. 

The  award-winning actress and singer , Sagal, also known for  the role of Peggy Bundy, in  the beloved (and also anarchistic) series of  American family deconstruction  "Married with Children" (1987-1997), achieves greatness in the role of  first old lady, grandmother and mother in law from hell, Gemma Teller Morrow.

In the role of Jax' s  adoptive father and chairman of the Club , Clay Morrow, we find veteran actor Ron Perlman.

Perlman, who is accustomed to the roles of the ... monster, both in the TV series "Beauty and the Beast" (1987-90)  as in "Hellboy",  continues the tradition, as a monster-father and  President of the Club.

His chemistry with his old lady Gemma, is explosive.

Never before has middle age been so rock & sexy. 

Charlie Hunnam's performance  in the role of  the restless, tough and sensitive Jax Teller, seems all American , although the actor is... British, while Maggie Siff convinces us as love-struck Tara.

Her relationship with the "mother of the tribe" Gemma, is  as enjoyable as  a roller-coaster ride.

Same goes for  her  transformation from conventional physician to the  loyal and latest prominent member of the brotherhood of bikers.

From   Grey's Anatomy to "Take a walk on the wild side"  

All the supporting   roles are extremely interesting and the casting super successful.

Special mention to Dayton Callie whose role as the cancer afflicted police chief, is one of the best written and played. It is an enjoyment to watch him trying to maintain an impossible  balance between the duty of his Office and his friendship with the Sons.

In season 1 we also find Ally Walker in the role of ATF agent June Stahl.
 
The Law had never had a more lawless representative.

Strangely, for most of the SOA fans, our most favourite Son is not Jax. 

Our hearts belong to Opie.

Low-key but very imposing, the long-haired, bearded Harrie "Opie" Winston, childhood friend of Jax, is portrayed by  real biker Ryan Hurst. 
Opie wins us over with his struggle with his own nature -romanticism vs toughness- and the reality of his world, and devastates us with his inevitable tragic fate.

The enemies of the club vary from season to season, from rival motorcycle clubs like the Mayans the One-Niners and the Lobos Sonora, white supremacists trafficking meth and  the League of American Nationalists, the Chinese and the Italian Mafia, to the IRA, the FBI the ATF, combined with brother against brother, son against father and mother against father and other ... domestic issues, no-one can tell who will be the last man or woman, standing.

Each time a season ends we are left breathless, wondering what else can possibly happen next, as the world of the Sons falls apart and comes together over and over again.

The music of the series is a chapter of its own. The song "This life" by Curtis Stigers & The Forest Rangers has you at the titles. The White Buffalo & the Forest Rangers  version of the Animals'  "The house of the rising sun/son"  at season's  4 finale ... epic .

All 7 seasons are out on Blu-Ray and DVD and streaming on Netflix for the unsuspecting Prospects to discover.

As for the rest of you Patch holders ... you can now watch the first season of the Sons of Anarchy prequel, entitled 'Mayans MC' on FX.

Co-created and produced by Kate Sutter and Elgin James, the spin-off is related to the first 9 SOA members and tells the story of the antagonist motorcycle club of the Mayans.

You can find the greek version of my review HERE

Gwoemul - 괴물 - The Host

Drive: Pure Perfection

Drive: Pure Perfection

                     

2011/100'                                                                         Listen here, while reading      

 

Some movies have you at their titles sequence. They bring to mind memories from the past, actors who became symbols, iconic shots, bigger than life characters, titles made of gold:  Taxi driver, Pale Rider, Bullit.

Movies most filmmakers dream of, they think they can make, they know the recipe, put in the right ingredients and still,  9 times out of 10, the food comes out  somewhat bland.

Then comes a Danish director by the name of Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher -1996,  Bronson -2008), who fidgets with the classic American story of the cursed hero with no name,   revs the engine and takes it all the way to the finish line of legend. And all that before the movie makes its way from the festival circuit to the cinemas and ends up on the shelves of  the DVD stores.

So what if this director failed his driver's license exams, 8 times ?

The hero of Drive has no past, no name. He is a Hollywood driver/ stuntman, a garage mechanic and occasionally a getaway driver for hire. He lives a lonely-ascetic life until he falls in love with his neighbor, a young woman named Irene who lives with her son Benicio. The father of the family is in jail. When he is released his old "partners in crime" blackmail him into taking part in a robbery. The driver offers to help him pay off his debts, but everything goes wrong.

  
Ryan Gosling delivers the role of the hero in low tones, with a moderate-leisurely manner, more machine than human himself, with a voice barely heard and a look that's difficult to decode. Hence the outbreak of violence that follows,  his primitive side that is revealed is a reversal of its own.

The hero is what he does, not what he says. His actions define him.

He never says "I love you", he sacrifices for those he loves. His unique driving skills are his weapons, his way to avenge, his survival mechanism, the means of his final escape.

Fundamental lessons in screenwriting from the Iranian Hossein Amini who took the homonymous book of James Sallis and deconstructed it -almost stripped it naked , leaving it in its pure substance.

Hence the almost nonexistent elliptical dialogues that leave the shots, the editing and the music to do all the work.

The music of the film has a story of its own. If we did not know we'd thought we had dived into the  melodic 80s. The electronic/pop music bands like Kraftwerk and  the sound of Eurovision (!!!) inspired the director, who  believes that Los Angeles is a city stuck in the 80s.

Music producer Cliff Martinez brought together the sound of bands from around the world and with his own musical score, created an incredible soundtrack. Special mention should be made to the College song "A real hero".

The whole gist of the character, the verse: "by day he was a human being and by night he was a hero".

 The casting, just perfect: Carey Mulligan is the innocent and loving mother who falls for the hero, Oscar Isaac is the repentant husband with the prescribed fate, the "villains" Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks, at the limit of the grotesque and painfully dangerous and Bryan Cranston as Shannon is the father figure of the hero, who finds himself  surrounded  by these characters  and their choices and he is led to the final violent outburst.

A big fan of Scorsese, Winding Refn, couldn't but have in mind the Taxi-Driver. When we watch the hero driving in the artificially lit streets of LA, we remember of another lonely hero by the name of  Travis Bickle in a taxi, roaming the streets of NYC and taking upon him to save,  Iris,  the teenage prostitute, in another terrible outburst of violence  (Taxi Driver -1976).

Here we also find Albert Brooks, one of the villains of Drive. 

The reasons why you should watch Drive: All the above. A classic American story told in a modern "European" way, where form serves narration and with breathtaking   anthology scenes like the one in the elevator.

Certainly one of my favorite films of all time and with Steve McQueen's "Shame" a great injustice in last year's Oscar race, with only one nomination for best achievement in sound editing .

Although Winding Refn, won the award for best director in the  2011 Cannes Film Festival  and with it a place in the heart of all  film enthusiasts.

Drive is out on Blu-ray and  DVD

 

You can find the greek version of my review HERE

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