Ozark

Year:  2017

Director:  Various

Rated:  NA

Release:  July 21, 2017

Distributor: Netflix

Running time: 10 x 1 hour episodes

Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz

Intro:
"Ozark is a quiet drama set in a violent world, and while it’s not Breaking Bad, for those who like well-thought out criminal dramas, Ozark delivers."

If you ever wondered how Narcos’s Pablo Escobar gets his money laundered, Netflix is back with a show for you. Ozark, created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams (who worked together recently as writer and producer on The Accountant, respectively), is Netflix’s latest original drama, and shows a side of drug smuggling rarely portrayed on screen: the banking.

Jason Bateman plays financial planner Marty Byrd, who goes into business with a cartel to launder money. After his business partner is caught stealing money, Marty and his family have to move to the Ozarks (the same region that served as the setting for Winter’s Bone), a rural area in the middle of America, to launder an incredible amount of money for the cartel or risk death. What they find is not a pristine lakeside community, but rather an area filled with problems that further risk their lives.

It’s Breaking Bad with a financial planner and set on a lake, and fans of the series will find it rewarding, but Ozark does not exceed expectations. The cast is fantastic and the show will hook you in, but it is not a groundbreaking show in its genre.

Jason Bateman’s Marty is a departure from his deadpan/straight man comedy shtick that has helped him become such a likeable presence on screen. Along with his recent turn in Joel Edgerton’s masterful The Gift, Ozark is clearly a way to diversify and break out, and this is reinforced by Bateman directing and executive producing on the series. Despite one “Buddy” bit of dialogue reminiscent of Michael Bluth, Bateman convincingly plays Marty with a new degree of intensity.

Laura Linney also stars as Wendy, a matriarch secretly just as strong-willed and determined as her husband Marty, or any of the influencers in the lakeside area. Linney gives emotional heft to many of the series’ key turning points, reminding the audience that a family is at the center of this laundering scheme. Linney is able to convey the desperation of a woman on the edge in scenes where her character is forced to keep it together for her family and her life.

Sofia Hublitz and Skylar Gaertner play Marty and Wendy’s children, Charlotte and Jonah Byrde. The family dynamic is more central to the storyline than in other dramas, which allows the young actors to explore the ways that the (in this case extreme) actions of their parents would affect children at these ages.

Julia Gardner steals scenes as Ruth Langmore, a kleptomaniacal Ozark native that becomes a major player in Marty’s life. Jason Butler Harner plays Roy Petty, a manipulative and borderline sociopathic FBI agent tracking down the family from a motel room. Petty prioritises ending the drug cartel over his relationships, including one with another FBI agent, to a criminal fault, pointing to the moral that there are no innocents in this world.

The plot weaves elements from storylines into one another in a sophisticated way not seen in many other dramas. New challenges arise naturally out of existing circumstances rather than out of the blue, which further complicates the web of hatred and employment in the series.

Tropes of the crime drama, like competing gangs and FBI agents, take an Ozark-twist. “Redneck” drug dealers trade in opium while selling their poppy flowers in the farmer’s market and a pastor, played by Michael Mosley, preaches on the lake from his boat.

Ozark is a quiet drama set in a violent world, and while it’s not Breaking Bad, for those who like well-thought out criminal dramas, Ozark delivers. Between an all-star cast and an interesting set-up, located in an intriguing and relatively unknown environment, this new Netflix show is a great option for crime-show-lovers to binge.