Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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99 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life on the corner leaves most other dramas in the shade, 31 Aug 2008
On the surface, The Wire is generically a cop drama, focusing on the attempts of a dedicated team of specialists to take down a drug kingpin. If that were simply the case, The Wire would stand as the best cop show ever made. However, it is so much more than that. The Wire is a dissection of a modern North American city, cutting through the socio-economic strata, depicting the lives of kids selling drugs on the corner, the bureaucratic management of police and their target-driven policies, the politicians attempting to balance what should be done against what needs to be done, school kids trying to walk a fine line betwixt education and the temptations of the corner and the drug barons organising their empire.
Even that description omits numerous other characters, plot threads and entanglements. More importantly than the Dickensian scope, The Wire has such a vivid sense of authenticity: much is shot on location in Baltimore, Maryland aka Bodymore, Murderland, that its depiction of life in an urban ghetto, the images of whole blocks of derelict slums, shattered lives, the poor and the desperate seem reminiscent of footage of Baghdad, post-U.S. invasion.
This authenticity might be derived from the fact the programme has two principal creators, David Simon, who worked for many years as a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun newspaper and Ed Burns who is a former homicide detective who worked extended drug surveillance cases. Such is The Wire's authenticity, that one real-life dealer from Baltimore commented in an interview that the only unrealistic thing about The Wire is that no m*f* in it watches The Wire!
The Wire is another phenomenal HBO drama. Previous dramas from that station have included Oz, which had quite a few cast members that ended up joining The Sopranos or The Wire. Oz has an immediate brutality quite distinct from anything else. The Sopranos has a witty overt intelligence that is instantly recognisable. Deadwood has such sophisticated linguistic construction. The Wire shares the complex multi-levelled plotting of these great series but is a more slower-burning affair.
As with the above-mentioned dramas, the ensemble cast of The Wire is outstanding and it could be inappropriate to highlight any one person in particular. Omar, a guy who makes a living robbing drug dealers has garnered some media attention but for me, The Bunk brings some much needed humour to the series.
Never winning many awards, having much commercial success or any high profile media interest, The Wire has nonetheless come to be regarded as quite possibly the finest drama series ever made. That's a big sell but entirely justified. There has never been anything approaching The Wire's depth before. Watch this series and all others seem one dimensional in comparison.
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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good as television gets, 12 Sep 2008
Having watched all 5 series in a very short space of time (over the past 2 months)this might colour my review slightly, however as of writing I can safely say that there has never been anything better I have seen, and that probably extends to movies as well as previous television series.
In a programme of great, great characters (the list is endless, Omar, Avon, D'Angelo, Bubbles, Daniels, Bunk, Rawls - not exactly likeable but certainly brilliant, and of course Stinger Bell) Jimmy McNulty rises just about to the top - quite simply one of the best and most enjoyable characters you are likely to see.
'Multi-layered' is one of those descriptions that you read and often it doesn't mean that much, but is some critics attempt to sound intelligent, but in this case the definition is spot on. This can be viewed on so many levels and each series brings something different. The story regarding Bubbles in itself is a masterpiece, they could take out all his scenes from across the 5 series and put them into a film, and it would win oscars across the board. To an extent Omar's story runs parallel, and whilst this doesn't pull on the heart strings in quite the same way, it is still exceptional.
My only slight criticism would be the level dips slightly in my opinion in series 2 (although people do disagree with that, so maybe is just how I see it and how I loved the storyline and characters of series 1 and 3) but 3,4 and 5 are exceptional. In a very, very (very) sad way by the end these characters felt like your friends, and it was pretty emotional that last episode montage.
Before it was the Soprano's, which I loved and was fantastic, but ultimately it didn't sustain it too well over the whole period, and don't think it had the depth of the Wire and did focus on one character a lot more, even if Tony Soprano was one hell of a character. I certainly don't remember as feeling as 'involved' in that as with the wire.
Films I have seen since, even very good ones, have felt slightly odd and light - how can a film develop a character over 2 and a half hours in the way this has done over 60 hours. Impossible.
One word of warning, if you're expecting a Prison Break / 24 / Lost type series, you're in the wrong place. This isn't cliffhanger television, or popcorn television in the way those programmes (much as i enjoy the first 2, not seen lost) they are fun and enjoyable, but ultimately there is no real depth to them.
And another - pay this the attention it deserves, you need to sit and watch this properly, not be doing other things whilst its on, it requires, and deserves, your full concentration. You will be rewarded.
One tip - I needed subtitles for a lot of it, it does help.
Enjoy.
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As good as TV drama gets., 18 Sep 2008
The thing that worries me when I see a load of 5 star reviews is "has this just been written by a bunch of undemanding fan boys?". I have certainly come across this in other areas of Amazon.
However there's no getting away from the fact that after 2 or 3 episodes of the Wire you realise you are watching something special. This is the Band of Brothers of urban crime shows. I will do my best to try and summarise why these series are so special into 3 main themes.
Firstly each series covers just one case. Unlike something like CSI things aren't neatly wrapped up in 1 hour. It shows the methodical nature of police work with police officers hardly ever touching a weapon...you know like real life. The series are happy to take their time, characters slowly develop sometimes over many series much like a great novel. This makes you care about the story, and you start to really care about the characters.
It also means the characters are rounded. Detective McNulty is the closest the series comes to a lead and the idea of a hard drinking cop isn't new, but it's the layers to him that count. At times he's the most reliable cop on the case at others acting like a self destructive animal because he's human and very, very drunk. But the story doesn't just dwell on the cops, the drug dealers have full blown characters too and you start to care for some of them like Michael in series 4 and 5 or of course the economics lecture attending Stringer Bell who wants to make the drug business more like a business using real economic models- now that is genius!
Indeed as the series continue they don't bin characters they add more so each series has a theme, the first is about the cops and the drug dealers, the second has all that plus the economic decline of a once great port city and how this effects the dockers, the third adds politics with the race to become mayor and how that makes police jobs harder, the fourth shows the decline of the inner city schools and the fifth adds the media into this heady brew.
Secondly the series are uncompromising, good people do bad things, bad people some times do the right things and there are no quick fixes to anything. Some episodes leave you shocked when a random act of violence can change a whole character's story. The Wire is certainly thought provoking.
Finally there's the change of tone. In the hands of the lesser writer this would all be unwatchably down beat, but the makers know this and so add light and shade to the whole thing. Characters laugh and silly things happen (I love one scene where the police trick one low level street dealer into thinking a photocopier is a lie detector machine) and at times when people do get a bit of luck or do the right thing, because they've been through hell it makes the happy moment even sweeter.
So if you've never seen them you really are missing out and if you have seen them then it's time to watch them again.
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