“Black bird”, a true story with an exciting psychological intrigue (8 and a half vote) – Corriere.it

It is only for now an excellent miniseries in 5 episodes that of “Black bird”, available on Apple TV +, but it will certainly continue. It’s a true story from the 90s, but it seems so well crafted that it’s perfect fiction with a handsome, popular football champion guilty of drug dealing and incarcerated with a promise of ten years to stay unless he does. confess, using his charisma, the recluse next door, suspected serial killer more disturbed than usual. There are two excellent characters who face each other in an inextricable psychological intrigue and little by little the two, trying a suspicious friendship, acquire intimacy, as well as suspicion and remorse.

All thanks to the cross and complementary skill of two actors such as 32-year-old Taron Egerton (Elton John in “Rocketman”) the infiltrator Jimmy, and the formidable Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewell”), with an iconography of the face that confesses the troubles and problems of a twin who placenta was harassed by the other, remaining only the crumbs of an infernal gestation which then will have its neurotic results after childbirth. Finally, as the father of the “spy” there is for the last time that good Scorsesian boy of Ray Liotta (who recently died on May 26) a former policeman who tries to help his son in prison. The series created and produced by Dennis Lehane (“Shutter island”, “Mystic river”, “Gone, baby gone” excellent thriller credentials) is the adaptation of the autobiographical book with the infinite title: “In with the Devil: a fallen hero , a serial killer, and a dangerous bargain for redemption ”written by James Keene and Hillel Levin and inspired, as it was said and as it has become commonplace in the series (see“ Staircase ”), by a real news story.

In these first five episodes, which do not exhaust not even half the title of the novel, we know the characters of the two protagonists who face each other with their respective suspicions, cautious glances and unexplored edges. We know that the serial killer is more than alleged, he has often had to deal with country girls on bicycles, but there is no evidence, there is no confession-redemption, and it is this that ours, using his discreet charm, tries to get, in constant contact with the director of the prison and with psychologists, even for a discount on his ten-year sentence. For the most part it is therefore a prison movie with some classic focal points, but it is the silent duel between the two protagonists that renews the environment and climate, making the episodes of about an hour each more and more exciting, while with attention and fear the ours approaches the serial killer to wrest a confession from the depths of his neuroses that will allow him to find the corpses of his young victims (he would also be a pedophile) before the appeal sentence that would send everything to future memory.

You have to hurry up and get into the mind upset and disturbed by the killer who, although lonely by nature, is nevertheless very proud of the curious attentions of the prisoner next door. Excellent direction of the first three episodes, by Belgian Michael R. Roskam, nominated for an Oscar for a foreign film, and also co-producer of the series of which we await with some inevitable impatience.