The Penguin Review: Colin Farrell Is No Phony Soprano In DC"s Slow-Burn Batman Spin-Off

With precious little information about the upcoming The Batman: Part II, Matt Reeves' Batman universe expands with HBO's 8-part spin-off series The Penguin. Once again starring Colin Farrell as wannabe Gotham City kingpin Oz Cobb, The Penguin's cast boasts newcomers like Christian Milioti, Deirdre O'Connell, Rhenzy Feliz and Clancy Brown and takes DC firmly into the realms of prestige TV.
Picking up immediately after the events of The Batman's ending, The Penguin deals with the aftermath of Carmine Falcone's death and the criminal underworld's attempts to consolidate their positions. Gotham City's crime families and gangs vie for control of the drug trade as chaotic heir Sofia Falcone (Milioti) and Oz Cobb make their own devious power plays. Is it all worth it? Definitely, but there are significant casualties along the way.
The Penguin TV-MA
Cast Colin Farrell , Cristin Milioti , Rhenzy Feliz , Clancy Brown , Michael Zegen , Theo Rossi , Alex Anagnostidis , Craig Walker , Mark Strong , Myles Humphus , James Madio Release Date September 19, 2024 Seasons 1 Streaming Service(s) HBO Max Showrunner Lauren LeFranc Avg Episode Length 60 Mins Expand See at HBO Max Somewhat inevitably, The Penguin has drawn comparisons to HBO's other top tier gangster show, The Sopranos, and the two stories do share some genetic material. But Colin Farrell's return as The Penguin is more than just a derivative clone in new DC pyjamas: it's a tense, bloody 8-hour commentary on power dynamics, deception, and the perculiar condition of living in Gotham City.
The Penguin Is Slow, But It's Worth It Oz Cobb's Story Deserves The Space To Breathe The pacing might not be for everyone, and there is a world where this could have been a movie - titled The Night of the Long Knives or Everybody Hates Oz perhaps - but there are big ideas that need room to breathe. And there’s a lot of story to get through. Just maybe don’t try and binge it all at once (thankfully something you can opt out of with HBO’s weekly releases), because it’ll hurt.
Though The Penguin does get glacial at times, the slow burn format is actually very clever: like Victor, the audience is set up to be groomed by Penguin. He’s not exactly impressive, but he’s compelling: a pragmatic villain, realistic about Gotham’s corruption who offers a means to exploit it. For the first few episodes, we are Vic, corrupted by his charm with flashes of his true capability, and it takes time for that sales pitch to take hold.
How The Penguin Sets Up Oz As The Dark Knight's Next Villain HBO's New Show Could Have Been Retitled The Penguin Rises There’s a danger with anything like this - built on the back of an excellent but largely bit-part character performance - that familiarity breeds contempt. Villain-focused stories often swerve too close to humanizing the subject, and losing some of the mythology, but by the end, The Penguin just about avoids the pitfall. Oz is very rewarding to watch, but you don’t really want him to win, even when his motivations are laid bare. This is not so much Breaking Bad as Breaking Worse, because Oz isn't ever really a good guy.
That's partly thanks to one of the grimmest, curb-stomp endings of any DC project that is shocking enough to leave a nasty mark, but which sets up Oz for his destined role in The Batman: Part II and beyond. At times, you genuinely do feel some connection to Oz, because his whole propaganda campaign is about personal betterment and taking down the elites, but by the end, he's despicable and deluded, and any vulnerability he might have projected vanishes.


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