TV drama Under the Bridge brings humanity to a terrible real-life crime story

Under the Bridge ★★★★
Disney+

It’s a sad truth that terrible real-life crimes can make for mundane television drama. Sometimes those grim autopsies and anguished interrogations serve as nothing more than tropes to be ticked off. One of the strengths of this impressive American true crime drama is that it recognises those limits and surpasses them. Made with both harsh necessity and genuine insight, Under the Bridge is idiosyncratic, even untoward at times. But the care with which it treats all of the central characters, regardless of their actions, prevails.

A scene from the true-crime drama Under The Bridge.Credit: Disney+

The crime is incomprehensible, a dilemma which echoes across this limited series: on a cold November night in the Canadian town of Saanich, 14-year-old Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta) is found dead after going out with the group of local girls she craved to be accepted by. The circumstances are bleak from the start, as is the casual cruelty of Reena’s sometimes friends, led by the gangster-obsessed Jo Bell (Chloe Guidry). The “who” question unfolds over the initial episodes, but underpinned by first-rate performances, the show is as much about the limits of finding out why.

Under the Bridge was adapted from writer Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 non-fiction book of the same name about the case. Filmmaker Quinn Shephard and Godfrey, who passed away just before production commenced, carefully sketch intersecting concerns. Reena is desperate to escape both the Indian heritage and Jehovah’s Witness faith of her parents, Suman (Archie Panjabi) and Manjit (Ezra Faroque Khan) for a hip-hop fuelled friendship with the mercurial Jo and her clique. Racism and shame reverberate through the teenage girls’ fraught dynamic.

The official response is haphazard and sometimes biased, and it is two comparative outsiders who are essential to the case. Local police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), who has a First Nations heritage but was adopted by the Saanich police chief, implicitly understands Reena’s outsider status, while her childhood friend, author Rebecca Godfrey (Riley Keough), has just returned to town to deal with her own trauma by writing a book about the town’s girls. Both are obsessive, both are compromised.

The narrative is panoramic by design. The flashbacks extend to an episode focused on how Reena’s parents met in 1979, which links her struggle to previous generations of the Virk family, while the sociological insight – Jo, for example, lives in a girl’s home the local community sneers at – is acute. But what resonates is the intimate connection between these characters. The relationship between Rebecca and the lone boy present when Reena died, Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton), is heartbreaking. On this show everyone is valued, no matter the cost.

How to Rob a Bank ★★★½
Netflix

Over four years starting in 1992 the armed robber the FBI nicknamed “Hollywood” stole approximately $3 million from Seattle banks.Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

This Netflix documentary about a prolific American bank robber deserves to be seen on the big screen, if only because Hollywood movies were central to his crimes: the heists were inspired by Point Break and the anti-establishment philosophy of Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi, while Heat’s cataclysmic shootout when a job goes wrong terrified the real-life criminal. You can argue that this feature-length does – or does not – have a Hollywood ending, but either way it’s watchable.

Over four years starting in 1992, the armed robber the FBI nicknamed “Hollywood” stole approximately $3 million from Seattle banks. He was efficient and frightening, wearing prosthetics and pointing his gun at tellers. Directors Stephen Robert Morse (Amanda Knox) and Seth Porges (Class Action Park) fashion the story around his crimes, the official investigation (which features a still salty rivalry between two investigators), and a profile of the bandit complete with diary entries and the testimony of friends and accomplices.

The storytelling is brisk and visually loaded: storyboards give way to recreations and genuine CCTV footage. It moves fast and has a convincing amount of detail in regards to what motivated “Hollywood” and his fascinating path to crime. But it doesn’t try too hard to make sense of the contradictions in his “free spirit” personality, or the corners he was willing to cut. This movie rarely slows down for contemplation.

Hotel Cocaine
Stan

Yul Vazquez, Danny Pino and Michael Chiklis in Hotel Cocaine.Credit: AP

Period crime sagas centred around an illegal drug subculture are clearly American writer and producer Chris Brancato’s thing: he’s created Narcos, The Godfather of Harlem, and now this white lines and disco tale set at the late 1970s Miami establishment where everyone in the cocaine trade comes to stay and play. Manager and Cuban émigré Roman Compte (Danny Pino) is the protagonist who has to play all the sides, which is also what the show itself does. There’s hedonism and risk, excess and immigrant angst. The many pieces here don’t add up to a great deal.

Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go
Binge

Hacks star Hannah Einbinder in her comedy special Everything Must Go.Credit: Binge

Hacks was the first acting role for co-lead Hannah Einbinder, so this stand-up special is a return to the field she spent years working in. The hour-long set, shot before a Los Angeles audience and very much referencing the city and her life growing up there, has an accomplished sense of comic misdirection. Einbinder is not so much an unreliable narrator as one prone to change your perspective mid-riff. Her self-deprecation comes with deceptively sharp edges, and they’re accentuated by her expressively physical performance. Her competitive cheerleading era wasn’t a complete write-off.

Without Sin
BritBox

Vicky McClure (centre) in Without Sin.Credit: Seven

Line of Duty star Vicky McClure did her best to hold together Stan’s ludicrous thriller Insomnia, but there no such hindrances in this mournful crime drama. She plays Stella, the mother of a murdered teenage daughter who, with her own life ground to a halt, attends a restorative justice session with her child’s killer expecting atonement, only to hear hints of a possible conspiracy. The four episodes track her journey towards the truth about her daughter, the Nottingham town where they lived, and ultimately herself. It’s a grim, methodical season that keeps you hanging on.

Dumb Money
Amazon Prime and Binge

Paul Dano as Keith Gill in a scene from Dumb Money.Credit: AP

While it’s by no means the full story, this energetic fictionalisation of the 2021 Wall Street clash between an online army of retail investors and billionaire hedge funds is the fun version. Paul Dano plays wonky everyman Keith Gill, whose eccentric exhortations blow up the price of video game retailer GameStop, making the likes of Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) sweat in his mansion. Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) populates the chronology with excessive needle drops, the many memes that Reddit birthed, and Pete Davidson as Keith’s idiot brother. It’s too many distractions, especially after a late bid for righteous people power.

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