Jon Bernthal
Showtime’s American Gigolo Is More Sad than Sexy: Review
The Pitch: Male prostitute Julian Kaye’s leisurely life of bedding wealthy older women and driving nice cars around southern California is suddenly disrupted when he’s framed for the murder of a client. It’s the role that made Richard Gere a household name in Paul Schrader’s 1980 film American Gigolo, but in Showtime’s new series of the same name, Julian is played by Jon Bernthal, the sensitive tough guy who’s become a burgeoning sex symbol in his own right with a string of memorable TV roles in The Walking Dead, The Punisher, and this year’s We Own This City. Julian, who has no memory of the night of the murder, confessed to the killing, and was sentenced to 15 years of prison. After Detective Sunday (Rosie O’Donnell) uncovers evidence that exonerates him, though, Julian is a free man who...
We Own This City Is a Comprehensive, Heartbreaking Account of a City in Ruins: Review
The Pitch: The tragic death of Freddie Gray in 2015 while in police custody was a watershed moment for Baltimore; Black communities and activists erupted in protest against the overwhelming presence of (and abuse by) Baltimore Police Department officers, who frequently dispensed justice at the end of a baton. And in 2017, the city saw the closest thing that’s come to accountability, with the arrests of the members of BPD’s Gun Trace Task Force — a unit specifically tasked with taking guns and drugs off the streets of Baltimore, but who instead used their institutional power to enrich themselves. Drugs planted in cars to justify arrests, seized cash going missing, violent crackdowns on anyone who looks at them funny: it was just another day on the job, particularly for the GTTF’s hothe...
HBO Shares Trailer for David Simon’s New Corrupt Cop Series We Own This City: Watch
You’ll never believe this, but David Simon has some thoughts on the Baltimore Police Department. The creator of such Baltimore-based dramas as Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire is once again tackling the BPD’s corruption in the new HBO limited series We Own This City. It premieres April 25th on HBO Max and the first trailer is out now. An adaptation of investigative journalist Justin Fenton’s book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption, the upcoming series follows Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal), who according to the synopsis is a member of “a plainclothes unit that went completely rogue and began hunting and robbing citizens and drug dealers alike as decades of a relentless drug war and mass incarceration in...
