Driven by the handclap beat of Dead Man’s Bones’s “Lose Your Soul,” The Company You Keep’s opening sequence finds con man extraordinaire Charlie Nicoletti (Milo Ventimiglia) and his family pulling off a job that involves the Irish mob, millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency, and some not particularly convincing F.B.I. disguises. This propulsive, deeply silly intro tells you all you really need to know about ABC’s new crime caper.
Charlie’s parents, veteran grifters Leo (William Fichtner) and Fran (Polly Draper), rely on old-timey charm and sleight of hand to dazzle their marks, while his sister, Birdie (Sarah Wayne Callies), runs the tech side of the family operation. When they’re not pulling off grifts, the Nicolettis can be found at their Baltimore bar, knocking back beers and arguing about their next score. They use lingo that’s initially left unexplained, such as “using Milo,” which we eventually learn refers to Leo’s guise as a flamboyant photographer with a thick European accent.
This will likely all feel extremely familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a heist movie, but the Nicoletti clan have a lively charm that manages to inject some life into even the show’s most played-out bits of banter. For a bunch of blue-collar criminals, they seem to have no problem hacking into security systems or forging artificial fingerprints to bust open safes. In fact, from the two episodes made available for review, one gets the sense that they can conjure up whatever ability or equipment the next job requires, like Batman plucking gadgets out of his utility belt.
Simply put, realism isn’t exactly on the agenda in The Company You Keep. And any moral complexity is quickly thrown out the window when we discover that the Nicolettis exclusively target bona fide bad guys. These aren’t complicated antiheroes, navigating the gray areas of an imperfect world, but rather Robin Hoods targeting corrupt pastors and drug kingpins.
Which works well for the part of the series that’s a “crime of the week” caper full of family hijinks but less so for the part that fancies itself a steamy romance. While recovering from a recent heartbreak, Charlie meets Emma Hill (Catherine Haena Kim), a keen-eyed woman who reads people so well that she can spot a cheater from his tan lines. He doesn’t know that Emma is actually an uncover C.I.A. operative and has no idea that he’s the one who just ripped off the crime syndicate she’s been trying to take down. They hit it off and wind up spending the night together, entranced by each other’s talent for deception. Since they both lie for a living, their pure, uncomplicated attraction suddenly feels like the only honest thing in their lives.
Theirs is a cat-and-mouse game, where Charlie and Emma are always on the brink of discovering the other’s true identity, while the mob plots ways to strike back against both of them. Their sultry meet-cute in a high-end hotel is reminiscent of Out of Sight, even if Ventimiglia and Kim don’t benefit from the same quality of material that George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez did. Clichés and corny lines come thick and fast throughout the show’s opening episodes, with both actors doing their best to charm their way through some very uninspired bits. Ventimiglia even manages to make a pick-up line about a theremin sound halfway sexy.
Despite Ventimiglia and Kim’s best efforts, though, the show’s insistence on shunning moral ambiguity across its storylines takes a bit of the danger out of the liaison between Charlie and Emma. A cop-and-robber romance can be a complicated dance, with lovers stepping back and forth over the line between right and wrong. When it’s done well, we become more sympathetic to how each person sees the world and start to wonder where that line really is. When it’s done really well, the idea of right and wrong feels much less important than them getting together.
The Company You Keep eschews this opportunity for tension or real sparks in favor of a straightforward good-versus-evil tale and easy likeability. As a crime show that ardently refuses to get its hands dirty, it can’t help but come off as a photocopy of better films and TV shows.
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