AMC’s “Dark Wind”: A TV Review

For the third episode of AMC dark winds, is under investigation for several murders on Navajo soil, as well as bank robberies that may or may not be related to a group of radical Native American activists. The case involves tribal police and the FBI, who are after human and supernatural means.

it’s right here dark winds He pauses the episode, which is mostly devoted to the coming-of-age ritual of the adult character, who has not been a part of the story before and will play no role in the future story.

The ceremony, the film and the episode represent why dark winds It’s interesting and deeply valuable, despite the first season where the central mystery never melds together so convincingly.

like a thriller dark winds It’s rushed and there’s a sense that a lot of motivation and explanation needs to be conveyed in long blocks of text that no one can figure out how to enact in an exciting way. Coming out in six episodes, all under 50 minutes and even under 40, the first season could have been better on the 90-minute pilot, which featured the main characters, settings and hallmarks of Tony Hillerman’s literary world. These are the conditions under which the show succeeds.

Zan McClarnon, who has taken a long break from the industry, plays Joe Liforn, a police officer working to bring down the Navajo tribe, apparently in the 1970s. Liforn and her husband Emma (Dina Allison), a nurse, are still grieving the loss. of her son in an oil rig explosion.

Liforn is at work when several bodies, including his dead son’s ex-girlfriend, are found at a local motel that may be related to a spiritual ritual. He’s very close to the case, but still starts tracking it, aided by newly appointed officer Jim Chi (Kyova Gordon), a college student who left the reserve nearly ten years earlier, and his veteran Sergeant Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Methen) . Pressure mounts on Whitworth (Noah Emerick), a racist FBI cavalry agent who is ready to break through jurisdictional barriers for what he sees as a situation urgent enough to advance southwest.

Eliminate the various crimes Liforn and Chi, the characters portrayed together or individually in Hillerman’s 20+ novels, will come into contact with a used car evangelist, a dedicated Dan (Ryan Wilson), a scarred and menacing Frank (Eugene Bravely Roard) and Elva Guerra), among other bright characters.

Hillerman’s world is a world of witches, doctors and secular skeptics, where the power of local religion depends on how deeply you believe and where the dark, hidden forces of human nature go. Sometimes things are complicated by a twisted plot, and sometimes things are complicated because they go against the grain of an outsider. However, series creator Graham Roland has undertaken a task that is not so simple as it is overly simplistic for convenience.

At first, Leaphorn explains to Chi, but really to us, that he’s a 50-tribe officer patrolling 27,000 square miles of tribal land, creating a sense of scale that disappears when all the season’s major offenses are conveniently connected and come. He repeats back to the small set of locations that are beyond each other’s stalls. Since the third or fourth characters were split into geographically separate exams close to having their teeth pulled, I’ve lost all sense of anxiety. That doesn’t stop even regular director Chris Air (smoke signals) He observes a lot the landscape and the patient’s introspection in the faces of his actors, his ability to stage the action or create tension is almost nil.

The speed of the time makes it difficult to invest in related crimes or their perpetrators. It also leaves the scene of the time, with the global threat of Vietnam between the founding of the American Indian movement and the Wounded Knee incident, so vague that, aside from the absence of cell phones, some viewers may not even notice.

But the speed of the season also makes it easy to say, “Oh, these aren’t the things I need to invest in.”

Instead, you can enjoy the rhythms of the Navajo language, the vibrant energy of the local markets, and the Monument Valley wallpapers that became indigenous places instead of Western dominion by John Wayne. You can get native ceremonies and rituals covered by Airy, Roland and other creatives with an emphasis on authenticity and life experience rather than fetishized exoticism.

Even more easily you can appreciate the quiet complexity of McLaren’s performance, which has a sour mood and a deep reservoir of sadness. It’s measured, it’s never tracked, and in the scenes between Liforn and Emma, ​​McClarnon and Allison capture the fervent love and pain of a long-term marriage, often without the need for dialogue. War, who just stole the stage reserve dogs s Rutherford FallsShe perfectly perceives these scenes as a young woman who can be the solution to her mental wounds or simply an excuse to bring those wounds to the surface.

Gordon cheese is not very well defined and the dynamic between Chis and Liforn should develop in the coming seasons. But I was surprised by how much I liked the relationship between Chi and Manuelito, which from the start felt like a flashy masterpiece. I haven’t seen a Canadian drama TribalSo Maten was a revelation to me here, getting more comfortable and intense as the season went on.

The biggest names Wilson and Emerick are solid and I think they have stars. Office s american people It helps as a door that works.

This is definitely the first season. dark winds Yup. This is a prequel, and as much as I’d like it to be more effectively presented and then more closely executed in season one, the parts are now in place to open up this world. Hillerman’s books have been adapted for PBS and the big screen in the past, but as before happy and leonardo For Sundance TV and the forest s Richter At Amazon it seems that the current moment of television is suitable for some kind of literary fiction.