Tulsa King review: Sylvester Stallone stars in Grumpy Old Grand Theft Auto
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Yes, Sylvester Stallone asks, "What the f--- is with the pronouns?" And yes, Dwight Manfredi, the mobster Stallone plays in Tulsa King, has other thoughts about what's going on with this country in general nowadays. "GM has gone electric, Dylan's gone public, a phone is a camera?" The New York enforcer just finished a 25-year stint in prison. He's also high as a kite for this Rip Van Winkle monologue. Stallone gives great stoned, which is a nice surprise in a career's seventh decade. When he laughs, he snorts. The Paramount+ show is a ridiculous drama that could become a wry comedy. But is its star the main problem, or the saving grace?
No question, Stallone's the draw: At last, Tango does television! The Paramount+ series, premiering Nov. 13, begins with Dwight leaving the penitentiary. The 75-year-old expects a hero's welcome. Instead, he gets an assignment. Ailing boss Pete (A.C. Peterson) has ceded control to the next generation, including his son Chickie (Domenick Lombardozzi) and wild-eyed capo Vince (Vincent Piazza). The middle-aged kids want Dwight to open up a crime outpost in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Not okay, says Dwight. "I made my bones when you were in f---ing diapers," he complains. "Well, now you're wearin' diapers," responds Vince. "Punch!" says Dwight. Actually, he just punches the jerk. Dwight does that a lot.
Brian Douglas/Paramount+ Sylvester Stallone in 'Tulsa King'
The concept here is simple: One fish out of two waters. Dwight's a man from the past — da friggin' hell is with these talking crosswalk signals? — and a Brooklyn bad dude in the buckle of the Bible Belt. But in a lame non-twist, this unfrozen caveman gangster does just fine. Right off the plane, he meets a trusty cabbie named Tyson (Jay Will), who becomes his full-time driver. His first stop is a dispensary owned by Bodhi (Martin Starr). Tough to imagine a weedier word jumble than "Bodhi (Martin Starr)." Dwight walks in, threatens violence, demands 20 percent of the weekly income, grabs dollar bricks from a safe, and leaves. Crime pays and is easy.
There are sad moments. Dwight lost touch with his daughter and speaks longingly about his late barber dad. You sense some autobiography, since Stallone's own father was a hairdresser. Certainly, it's autobiographical when an attractive young woman walks up to Dwight and says, "Excuse me, are you famous?" Then her friend Stacy (Andrea Savage) asks Dwight to show her his mini-bar. But Stacy freaks when she finds out Dwight remembers when JFK got shot. "This is not an age gap," she declares, not getting her clothes back on fast enough. "This is an age canyon."
Stallone does not look like he was in prison for 25 years. He does not even look 75. Burgess Meredith looked 75 in Rocky III. Whatever supplements and regimens the real-life Rocky has applied to himself make him look only like himself. The last time he sorta disappeared into a part was, coincidentally, 25 years ago. Cop Land starred Stallone and his wonderful belly as a loser Jersey sheriff facing NYPD corruption. That great movie's excellent trick was how Stallone, three Rambos deep, came off like a believable never-was. The presence of Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and Ray Liotta brought extra-cinematic tension: Scorsese's guys vs. Planet Hollywood. Tulsa King needs legit threats like that. So far, the bad criminals are vain weaklings, and the Tulsans think Dwight's awesome. And there's a big twist with Stacy which is funny in the wrong way, though it gives Savage a chance to show off her screwball comedy chops.
Creator Taylor Sheridan made Yellowstone. Paramount would like him to make a thousand more of that. I wonder, though, if he's sensitive to allegations that his Manly-Man output leans arch-conservative. Tyson is the Black chauffeur for a white man named after President Eisenhower, and at one point Dwight actually tells the younger man: "Someone's gonna slap some good grammar in your mouth." Geesh. But in the same episode, a local dealer won't let Tyson buy a car, so Dwight pays the man a visit. "You see a young Black guy with a mountain of money and right away you say, 'Oh, he's gotta be a drug dealer'," he says. "But I walk in, a nice suit, and you're not afraid anymore." And that's how racism works, Dwight does not say, though he does punch the salesman. Later, he punches a guy who's being too grabby with a woman.
You sense an urge to star-polish Dwight's rough edges. Tulsa King's showrunner is Terence Winter, who worked on The Sopranos before creating Boardwalk Empire. One of those was a masterpiece about an awful man's moral downfall, and the other was a gorgeous vulgar goof. I had high hopes for Boardwalk Goes West, but Tulsa's a bit of a diet beverage. Garrett Hedlund pops up as a nice barkeep with money issues. Dwight goes to Mickey Mantle's house to talk about how great Mickey Mantle was. You keep waiting for someone to challenge his toughness, or for one just-punched victim to call the cops. The one moment of genuine drama comes in that pronoun monologue. The camera cuts to Bodhi, who is supposed to be afraid that Dwight will get him killed. Starr's visible anxiety channels a deeper fear: Is this the scene that gets me canceled?
The Tulsa location is distinctive. Stallone is never not interesting, so the best moments are his quiet ones: Dwight ordering ribs at a lonely bar, Dwight wearing his reading glasses while he types. An upcoming Cop Land reunion with Annabella Sciorra is enough to keep me watching. The question for Tulsa King going forward is whether it can complicate Dwight's archaic act or sanctify him as a boomer bull in a millennial china shop. Right now, it's a frictionless fantasy about making instant friends, attracting younger women, and instantly knowing everything about the legal pot industry. Imagine a show that zeroed in on the comedy potential of Starr and Stallone as odd-couple criminals in the burgeoning cannabis space. Who wouldn't watch Yellowstoned?
Grade: C+
Related content:
