Review: Here come ‘Hap and Leonard,’ a femme fatale --- and trouble. It’s worth a look
Michael Kenneth Williams as Leonard Pine, left, and James Purefoy as Hap Collins in “Hap and Leonard.”
Perhaps going for something a little less elevated than usual, Sundance Channel went and got itself a miniseries based on Joe R. Lansdale’s 1990 swamp-noir pulp novel “Savage Season,” titled “Hap and Leonard,” for its main characters. (There are other “Hap and Leonard” novels, possibly to be adapted someday, if enough of you like this one; the credit is “based on the book series,” and characters from other books do pop in.)
Created by director Jim Mickle and his frequent co-writer Nick Damici — their most recent big-screen collaboration, the 2014 “Cold in July,” also adapted a Lansdale novel — the series, which debuts Wednesday, stars James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams as the eponymous, down-and-out duo, with Christina Hendricks a sort of down-home femme fatale in blue jeans.
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The year is 1988 (George H.W. Bush is on the TV, campaigning). Leonard (Williams), a black, gay Vietnam vet who likes country music and leans conservative, and Hap, who spent time in Leavenworth as a conscientious objector, are best friends who work together on an East Texas rose farm (for one scene, anyway). Leonard is angry and Hap is worn; they bicker affectionately, box recreationally and look good in snap-button shirts and straw cowboy hats.
Back into their lives comes Hap’s ex-wife Trudy (Hendricks) — “Here comes trouble,” Leonard says, needlessly — with a promise of money. The unrecovered spoils of an old bank heist, buried under a “big W” — sorry, that’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” — are lying at the bottom of a river under a bridge neither Trudy nor her current compatriots, a small band of old left-wing militants led by her most-recent ex-husband (the effectively low-key Bill Sage, a Hal Hartley favorite and one of the stars of Mickle’s “We Are What We Are”), have been able to find.
The opening titles make visual reference to paperbacks of the old-fashioned “manly” sort, laying down a protective scrim of irony. Phallic remarks aside, there is also a sensitive streak that runs through Lansdale’s characters that survives on screen.
The adaptation — the half available to see, in any case — is generally faithful to the novel, with some added elements, notably some psycho-for-the-hell-of-it ultraviolence to introduce a couple of (redrawn) characters early into the mix. (They play like something flown in from “Fargo.”) Still, these scenes are less than explicit, and as befits the network of “Rectify” and “The Returned,” the series begins leisurely, and mostly stays that way. (Sample dialogue: “You want something?” “Got any coffee.” “Mmmm-hmmm.” “Should we go up to the house?” “That’s where the coffee’s at.”)
It doesn’t all make perfect sense, especially where the action departs from or adds to the book, and the players, as talented and likable and natural as they are, sometimes seem to be actors on the job rather than people whose fate has brought them to such and such a pass; the script keeps them busy, without (so far) bringing them to life. They’re good, but not compelling company.
But it’s always wonderful merely to behold. Mickle works here with his frequent cinematographer Ryan Samul, who has an eye for landscape and still life and a deft touch with both natural and theatrical light. His work, which evokes the art photography of the period, feels careful and casual at once, and on its own makes “Hap and Leonard” worth a look.
MORE:
Wednesday’s TV Highlights: ‘The Goldbergs’ on ABC
‘Cold in July’ with Michael C. Hall and Don Johnson heats up new trailer
The complete guide to home viewing
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