Dope Thief Premiere Recap: Let Me Tell You a Bedtime Story

Philly’s looking extra-cold and gray for a cold open that puts the heat under us fast as Ray Driscoll (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny Carvalho (Wagner Moura) — a couple of small-time Philadelphia crooks posing as DEA agents to rip off a humble drug operation — rush a house of unsuspecting drug runners and make out with a modest take. Henry and Moura argue about the necessity of hiring a third guy to watch the door with all the locked-in charisma we’ve come to expect from two of our greatest modern character actors and TV stars.

Sometimes a premise just sells itself, you know?

Based on Dennis Tafoya’s 2009 novel of the same name, Dope Thief starts strong and moves with the scrappy, fight-or-flight confidence of its protagonist, Ray. “Let me tell you a bedtime story,” Ray tells his captive audience as Manny ransacks the house. The “story” is of a young man who spent his formative years in juvie, then graduated to a stretch in federal prison when he turned 18. The young man in question, of course, is Ray himself — a perpetually abused, isolated, down-on-his-luck Black man with no path forward but to navigate, best he can, the stratified hustler’s ball that is the American rat race.

You really couldn’t think of a more apt canvas for Peter Craig — whose writing credits since his debut crime-drama feature The Town have included everything from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (Parts 1 and 2 … Jesus, remember how often we were doing that back then?) to The Batman, Bad Boys for Life, and, most recently, Gladiator II — to return to the true-blue American crime story. Nor is there a better showcase for Henry’s singular talent, as yet criminally underutilized since Atlanta wrapped its GOAT-ed run.

The rest of the cast ain’t too shabby, either. Kate Mulgrew (my beloved Captain Janeway, am I right, fellow Trekkies?) is Theresa, Ray’s adoptive mother and his father Bart’s (Ving Rhames) “old lady” who took Ray in as a boy when his dad went to prison. She’s an ornery old Philly gal with a heart of gold and a ratty little dog named Shermy. Being an elite of the West Coast variety, my ear isn’t attuned to the East Coast accents to know how well Mulgrew’s Philly-ing her dialogue, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t working for me. Anyway, we come out of our cold open at Theresa’s house just as Ray drops in, inquiring about her bills and medical test results and establishing their hard-talking, soft-hearted rapport with each other. “Degenerate,” Theresa grumbles as Ray mentions Manny is about to pick him up “for work.” Ray is cagey about his “work” situation, and Theresa is cagey about her bills and medical results, but she sends him out the door with a cupcake for his birthday, which is reminiscent of his first birthday in her care.

“Just because we’re not real law enforcement doesn’t mean we’re not professional,” Ray explains to Rick (Spenser Granese), an old frenemy of Ray’s from prison who might have a new business proposition for our guys. He and Manny engage in a little tag-team exposition that gives us the lay of their land, their game, and their dynamic as friends and actual partners in crime. The snappy back-and-forth intercut with a montage of them committing their robberies in DEA disguise demonstrates all the careful planning and moment-of-truth bravado they say is required for their particular line of work. On a technical level, the scene is not unlike Ray and Manny’s operation itself — economical, efficient, and immersive, if not a little slap-and-dash feeling.

All right, all right, I get it, Rick intimates with his reaction to their little spiel. Ray and Manny have a good thing going — not big enough to attract actual attention from the Feds, nor with the type of low-level drug runners who have any recourse. Plus, they don’t feel it too much of a stretch to see themselves as local Robin Hoods (despite the fact that they ain’t stealing from the rich and aren’t exactly reinvesting their income back into the community). In any case, Rick argues they’re bound to draw unnecessary heat in the city if they keep this up. But out in the country, where he operates, there are slightly bigger fish worth frying with a fraction of the burn risk.

Against his better judgment and Manny’s apprehension, Ray decides to take Rick up on the job. Manny’s a little shaken by the feeling of his “side hustle” taking up more and more oxygen. His girlfriend, Sherry (Liz Caribel Sierra), is moving in with him, and the elevating stakes aren’t sitting well with his current matrix of Catholic guilt and justification for his criminal deeds. Not even the Patron Saint of Thieves hanging around his neck can sanction the path they’re looking down. For Ray, the mortal stakes lie in not taking the bigger job (and bigger payout). Theresa needs $10,000 and she won’t tell him why, but he thinks the medical tests and bills at her house have something to do with it.

Here’s where we come up with a well-placed, economically applied character-study montage for Ray, who narrates the proceedings from his floor chair at an AA meeting. We learn that Ray’s sobriety is shaky at best, and the path foisted upon him early in life has led him to an alienated, somewhat antisocial existence. “Sometimes you just don’t want to see,” he says of the times his father would lock him in a closet to keep his son from seeing him get high. Ray is an incredibly empathetic human being on the run from his own spiritual sight, as demonstrated when he stakes out the country drug house and his focus shifts to Mina (Marin Ireland), one of the alleged cookers they’re about to rob: “I felt like I knew exactly who she was, ’cause I could feel the cage she’d put herself in.”

Ridley Scott, the consummate workman auteur-curmudgeon and occasional Apple TV hired gun, directs “Jolly Ranchers” like it’s a bona fide 21st-century Ridley Scott joint. Back in American Gangster territory. Not necessarily the man’s strongest arena, but neither is the, uh, gladiatorial arena these days (I dug Gladiator II, by the way, just as an intriguing mess). But Scott’s economical, quick-draw commercial style is well suited for the modern TV arena, as is his ability to usher in a straightforward tone for a well-positioned cast. Black-and-white images of a traumatic past show us a girl from school, taken in a car accident with a young Ray behind the wheel.

We’re well set up, both emotionally and cinematically, for a killer robbery gone wrong by the time we get to the big finale. Again, props to Scott and the crew for executing a memorable piece of grimy True Detective–esque chaos and bloodshed. The shit hits the fan when a tweaked-out Rick slips his trigger finger and shoots his captive cooker through the head. Mina, who’s giving some serious cop with her straight ’n’ true pistol’s aim and authoritative exclamation of “Like hell you’re fuckin’ Feds,” fires at Rick, who immediately returns another round and hits Mina in the neck. She makes it out of the house alive, while Ray and Manny make it out with a big black bag full of money and several aloe vera bottles of liquid meth. And they’re mere miles away from the place when an ominous voice (that sounds so much like the Ghostface voice from Scream I had to Google it to make sure it wasn’t — odd but, I must say, very effective choice) crackles through the other end of their cheap walkie-talkies. The voice’s direct, cool, but impassioned threats on their lives make it clear: They’ve just ripped off some major players in the drug war. Neither real cops nor real hustlers, theirs has always been an ethereal criminality, moving like ghosts between worlds, no waves made. “Until now,” they realize in unison.

Bottom of the Bag

• Meanwhile, Mina wakes up in the hospital with a pair of other police officers filling her in on what’s going on. With her voice knocked out of commission, she furiously writes a series of curse-ridden demands — an iron will unencumbered by the weakened state of the body that houses it — chief among them, “KEEP MY COVER.” Had my eye on her as a venerable screen presence since I saw her in the indie-horror joint The Dark and the Wicked. Couldn’t think of a more exciting choice for the resident anti-hero cop and mirror to our anti-hero criminal, Ray.

• I couldn’t help but think of Gene Hackman’s passing when watching this first episode — not only one of the great American screen actors but a frequent fixture of the type of ’70s crime flicks for which Dope Thief, The Penguin, and other shows like it are the modern comp. Watching Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura play off each other in this joint is uncannily reminiscent of watching Hackman and Roy Scheider in The French Connection, or Dustin Hoffman and Gary Busey in Straight Time. And there’s no question Brian Tyree Henry’s unique abilities as an actor tap into the same deep well of screen presence and emotional integrity that flowed through Hackman’s work, no matter how flawed the character. If there’s anyone worth passing the Hackman baton to in today’s media landscape, it’s Henry.

• Hey, folks! Looking forward to recapping another killer crime show with y’all. Last we spoke, I was recapping The Penguin, and obsessed as I am with the Gotham crime saga in all its iterations, it’s great to be back on the beat with a solid crime story that doesn’t require a comic-book overlay to do its thing.