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| CHRIS EVANS, JAEDEN MARTELL & MICHELLE DOCKERY |
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| CAPTAIN AMERICA TRIES A SERIOUS DRAMATIC ROLE |
‘DEFENDING JACOB’ is a mini-series on Apple TV based on the novel by William Landay that ended just last Friday. There will be spoilers here, so it’s up to you if you want to continue reading this review or not.
Chris Evans, better known as Captain America of “The Avengers” series, attempts some serious acting in this mystery whodunit cum family drama. He plays Andy Barber, the assistant district attorney in the town of Newton, Massachusetts.
His wife, Laurie (Michelle Dockery of “Downton Abbey”), is a teacher to traumatized kids and they have a 14-year old son, Jacob (Jaeden Mitchell who appeared in the bad horror flick “The Lodge”.)
Their happy peaceful life is suddenly turned upside down when Ben, a classmate of Jacob is killed in the park and he becomes the prime suspect after a fingerprint found inside Ben’s sweater matches his own print.
Naturally, Andy and Laurie are both shocked, but they are firm in their belief that their son is innocent. Jacob says he just found Ben lying in the park and tried to help him not knowing he’s already dead.
Andy later reveals a deep dark family secret: his dad, Billy (JK Simmons), is a convicted rapist and murderer and is serving a life sentence in prison. Jacob might have inherited his so called murder gene.
More evidence is found incriminating Jacob but a convicted pedophile in their community, Leonard Patz, hanged himself and left a suicide note taking responsibility for Ben’s death, so Jacob goes free.
But Andy is suspicious about Leonard’s death and his dad Billy confirms that he hired a hitman to kill Leonard and leave the suicide note behind because he doesn’t want his grandson Jacob to spend his life in jail like what happened to him.
The series is faithful to the book up to that point. The final episode chooses to deviate from the book’s conclusion. In the book, Laurie gets to confirm that their son is indeed a killer and takes drastic steps of her own, resulting to Jacob’s death.
On TV, they all remain alive and the ending is kind of “bitin” or hanging. The show has good production values, with Director Morten Tyldum (who did the impressive “The Imitation Game” about Alan Turing) coming up with fantastic aerial shots of the town of Newton.
But overall, the series is quite disappointing. To begin with, it’s stretched to 8 episodes and you can feel all the tedious padding.
The whole thing can be told in a two-hour movies, with much faster pacing. This is sad because the acting is good. Martell as Jacob is well cast.
He really looks like his age, unlike some shows where much older actors are cast to play teenagers, like in “Riverdale” or “The Politician”. He also really looks innocent you won’t suspect at all that he’s guilty.
Chris Evans as the dad looks convincingly distraught all throughout, determined to fight for his son’s innocence at all costs and making some wrong decisions along the way.
But it is Michelle Dockery as Laurie who’s so affecting as the mom who loses her job and her friends because her son is considered pariah. But her character’s arc, showing shock and grief when she realizes that her son is not totally clean, is even more stunning.
Giving great support are Cherry Jones as the defense lawyer, J.K. Simmons who appears only in a few scenes but makes much of an impact as Evans’ dad, and Daniel Henshall as Patz, the convicted sex offender.
