It has already become almost impossible to count all the series on which the hyper-productive Taylor Sheridan (screenwriter of the films Sicario and Sicario II, Hell or HIgh Water) worked. After “Yellowstone” and countless spin-offs about the Dutton family, he and Canadian actor Hugh Dillon (who also plays a minor role in “Yellowstone”) came up with a violent, violent and rather brutal action series set in the fictional town of Kingstown, Michigan. It is an industrial city with as many as seven prisons and everything there revolves around the prison business, and the McLusky family has been maintaining a fragile peace there for decades.
Mitch McLusky (Kyle Chandler) has the status of Mayor, but we would never translate his function as mayor in the true sense of the word. His function is actually to moderate the relations between various gangs, prisoners, guards in prisons, policemen and everyone else interested and thanks to them there is relative peace. But after Mitch is killed right away in the first episode of the first season, his job will have to be taken over by his younger brother Mike (Jeremy Renner), who acts almost like Michael Corleone. He is not very happy that he has to inherit the family business and become the head of the family, but we will see that he will do very well in this.
We will also see that laws practically do not apply in Kingstown, as if it were in the wild west or in Africa, and this attempt to mix themes from much more successful series such as “Oz” and “The Wire” turned out to be not overly convincing. Everything here is excessive and illogical, the police are killing machines that kill everyone in turn, everyone is corrupt and corrupt, and as time goes by, it becomes more and more senseless and illogical. Mike claims that they’re not breaking the law, they’re just bending it, but after a solid introduction, “Mayor of Kingstown” quickly deflates and turns out to be quite a disappointment.
It is violent and brutal, real testosterone and adrenaline action in which blood flows in hectoliters, both inside and outside prisons, and it all seems repetitive and goes around in circles. Mike constantly goes from one end of the city to the other, in and out of prisons and tries to smooth the situation, reach agreements by giving concessions to criminals and the police. When chaos breaks out in the prisons, all that violence will spill over into the streets, but the biggest problem is that it’s all terribly unconvincing and unrealistic. I’m sure there is no place like this anywhere in America, and as time goes by the story there is completely meaningless and it’s hard to even guess where it all leads, if it leads anywhere at all.