In Black Rabbit, Jason Bateman plays Vince, older brother to Jake Friedken (Jude Law). Despite not having known at first which brother each actor would play, Law and Bateman each thoroughly embodies his role.Netflix/Supplied
Black Rabbit is one of those series, like Breaking Bad and Ozark, where the clock is ticking and the characters are sweating and the rubber-band tension is winding tighter and tighter until you think it just has to snap. It’s terrific. (It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 7 and arrives on Netflix Sept. 18.)
After years of struggling, good things are finally about to happen for Jake Friedken (Jude Law). His restaurant/VIP hangout, Black Rabbit, is the coolest spot in New York City, tucked under the Brooklyn Bridge – fun fact, the building in real life is the oldest continuously operating bar/restaurant in the city – with the hottest chef, Roxie (Amaka Okafor); the freshest interior designer, Estelle (Cleopatra Coleman); and the hippest backer, Wes (Sope Dirisu), a star musician and entrepreneur, who’s also Estelle’s boyfriend and Jake’s best pal.
The team is about to seize a business opportunity that will propel them into New York restaurant icon-hood – until Jake’s troublesome older brother, Vince (Jason Bateman), shows up, trailing behind him massive gambling debts and vengeful local gangsters, led by Joe Mancuso (Troy Kotsur). Flake by flake the walls crumble, and you can feel the downward spiral twisting your own guts. Even more sick-making, you see how every terrible thing that happens could have been prevented if a person had just done one thing differently, said one thing more.
This might not sound like the most original premise, but the details make it extraordinary. Co-creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman have created a deeply textured world, where every ort of glamour and grime (the bookie’s hangout under a Turkish bath, the entrepreneur’s aerie) feels right, and every character – charismatic bartender, grunge-chic tattoo artist, angel-faced hostess, suspicious reporter, gay assistant chef, predatory art-world star, slick financier, mysterious fixer – feels authentic. The relationships are tangled trip wires, but in a way that makes perfect, only-in-New York sense.
Jake (Jude Law), left, and Vince (Jason Bateman). Black Rabbit echoes aspects of Bateman’s accountant-turned-criminal series, Ozark.Netflix/Supplied
It’s also the perfect series for right now, set in an America where economic inequity is rampant, deaths of despair (from drugs, alcohol and suicide) are rising, more people admit they have few or no close friends, and even high school students report persistent feelings of hopelessness. The Jakes, who are trying to do everything right, are thrashing frantically to keep their heads above water, while the Vinces are cutting every corner, to no avail. The only people thriving are those who look at despair as an opportunity they can take advantage of.
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I especially appreciate the series’ strong feminist undercurrent about what happens to women in the restaurant business, specifically in VIP rooms where “good times” mean that money, drinks, drugs – and entitlement − are flowing unchecked.
Apparently Law and Bateman weren’t sure at first which brother each would play, but given how thoroughly each embodies his role, the opposite choice seems patently absurd. Law, a great actor who unfairly became a bit of a punching bag, is very, very good as Jake: his gently aging handsomeness; his slightly-too-tight smile, which masks an inner clamminess; the way he shoulders the burden of being the “better,” more beloved brother.
Like his character, Law cedes the spotlight to Bateman, who has the flashier role, and seizes it between his teeth. Vince may be a sad sack, but Bateman does not play him that way. His Vince is furious that he’s flailing. He’s enraged at everyone, at himself, at fate. When someone sticks a gun in his face, he doesn’t cower, he slaps it away with a huffy, how-dare-you outrage.
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There are echoes of Bateman’s accountant-turned-criminal in Ozark, and there are other Ozark echoes too: the line drawings in the opening credits, which foreshadow what we’ll see in each episode; the fact that Bateman directed the first two episodes, and his Ozark wife Laura Linney directed the next two. But Bateman goes deeper here than ever before, and it’s thrillingly fun to watch.
Baylin, Susman and their writers are taking a hard look at a hard world − where everything is transactional; where to succeed, one must think only of what one wants, without purity or empathy – and they’ve created a rotting daisy chain of shakedowns and betrayals that bring that idea alive. They know that tragedy doesn’t result only from epic battles between good and evil − more often tragedy is simply one bad choice versus a stupider one. We writhe because we can see justice in the near distance, yet we cannot reach it. Black Rabbit makes your heart race. Until it breaks.
