DVD Review: Sons of Anarchy: Season One: Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Johnny Lewis, Maggie Siff, Ron Perlman, Dayton Callie, Ken Choi, Lela Jane Cortines, Liane Alexandra Curtis, Allen Coulter, Bill Gierhart, Charles Haid, Guy Ferland, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Kurt Sutter, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Dinner: Movies & TV
DVD Review: Sons of Anarchy: Season One: Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Johnny Lewis, Maggie Siff, Ron Perlman, Dayton Callie, Ken Choi, Lela Jane Cortines, Liane Alexandra Curtis, Allen Coulter, Bill Gierhart, Charles Haid, Guy Ferland, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Kurt Sutter, Mario Van Peebles, Michael Dinner: Movies & TV
Product Description
The writer of the Shield and the producer of the Sopranos bring you the most ruthless adrenaline-packed new drama of 2009. With over 40 minutes of unaired scenes, the DVD takes you even deeper in the unexplored world of this outlaw Californian Motorcycle Club as its members struggle to balance family life and weapon-trafficking business
Disc 1: 176 Minutes
**Forced Trailers 1, 2, 3
**Pilot
**Seeds
**Fun Town
**Patch Over
Disc 2: 176 Minutes
**Giving Back
**AK-51
**Old Bones
**The Pull
Disc 3: 176 Minutes
**Hell Followed
**Better Half
**Capybara
**The Sleep of Babies
Disc 4: 50 Minutes
**The Revelator
**Head out on the Highway: The Making of Sons of Anarchy Season 1
Great show,
By Wheelchair Assassin (The Great Concavity) -
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)
The Shield may be lamentably gone from TV, but prominent alumnus Kurt Sutter seems to have taken it upon himself to carry on its legacy with Sons of Anarchy, and if the show’s first season is any indication he’s more than up to the task. Anyone who enjoyed The Shield’s combination of intelligence and testosterone will certainly find a lot to like here, as SoA quickly established itself as among TV’s most unique and consistently compelling shows and only got better from there. Striking a near-perfect balance between grit and sensationalism, it takes viewers through a world marked by violence, double-dealing, and racial division, with an emphasis on the ambiguous morality and personal and familial baggage that come with a life lived between the straight world and the criminal one. The machinations of the characters and the twists of the plot are almost operatic, but the show remains rooted in the harsh realities of gangland.
The premise is sort of Hamlet-meets-the-Sopranos: youthful biker and new dad Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) finds himself trying to balance work with personal life as the Vice President of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcylcle Club Redwood Original (aka SAMCRO), a gun-running biker gang co-founded by his late father and now run by his stepfather Clay Morrow (the ever-swaggering Ron Perlman), who’s married to Clay’s widowed mother Gemma (Katey Sagal, in pretty much the biggest departure possible from her Married With Children days). From the somewhat hippie-ish beginnings envisioned by Jax’s father, SAMCRO has evolved into a criminal powerhouse, especially in their central California base of Charming, where they’re practically a small-town Mafia. These guys may not be as bad as the Hell’s Angels, but the show makes it clear that they’re far from harmless nonconformists, as we see them running guns, committing murders and (in one particularly stunning scene) burning off the tattoo of a perfidious former member. Single-episode plots focusing on the gang’s efforts to turn a profit and stay out of trouble are expertly mixed with longer arcs dealing with the constant conflicts of gangland life and the mounting tensions within the club. As the season progresses, it increasingly develops into a battle of viewpoints between Clay’s world-weary cynicism and Jax’s (relatively) idealistic leanings and pangs of conscience, which leads inexorably to a conclusion that already has me drooling in anticpation of season two.
In another welcome parallel with The Shield, the show’s writing gets progressively more complex and nuanced as the season goes on, giving the cast, a nice assemblage of recognizable (but not household) names, a lot of room to work. Further cementing his status as Hollywood’s leading Jewish tough-guy actor, Perlman is impossible not to watch as Clay, the club leader who walks a fine line between toughness and ruthlessness. Clay’s a classic antihero in the Tony Soprano-Vic Mackey mold, whose occasional moments of decency don’t quite compensate for his myriad of bad acts, but he’s practically a softie compared to his wife. Taking the concept of standing by her men very seriously, Gemma’s the very picture of steely determination, willing to say and do anything to safeguard her family, and she shares both Clay’s ability to perceive all the angles and his lack of reservations in doing what needs to be done.
For his part, Jax is certainly no saint, but he hasn’t quite been won over to the Machiavellian value system championed by his mother and stepfather. Constantly tugging at his conscience are the newly-discovered writings of his late father John, a somewhat intellectual type who didn’t necessarily intend for the club to become a crime syndicate. The voice-over narration of John’s journal is a bit of a contrived device in a show largely devoid of them, but it does nicely frame the struggles that come to define the season. This season also sees a succession of great supporting turns from recognizable faces–Jay Karnes as a twisted ATF agent with a thing for Jax’s ex, Mitch Pileggi as a vicious Nazi meth lord, Ally Walker as an enjoyably amoral Fed who vows to take the Sons down–that only serve to up the entertainment quotient. Even the law-enforcement officers–the shady, compromised Chief Unser and the more principled, by-the-book Deputy Chief Hale–eventually emerge as multi-dimensional characters in their own right.
Overall, it’s extremely difficult to find fault with this season. SoA seems to have flown under the radar a bit while shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad get all the acclaim, and while those are both great shows I think SoA easily holds its own as one of the best on TV right now. If it maintains its level of quality in season two, we viewers could have yet another all-time great on our hands.
hellfire and damnation,
By Jackie Lee “raised by wolves” (sunny Southern Californis) -
Although gritty and sometimes repulsive, featuring characters you wouldn’t like living next door, the series is intense and gripping way beyond most TV shows. The story line keeps getting more and more tangled, and I know in my heart that it can’t possibly end well. Serious good acting, especially by Ron Perlman and Katy Segal. They make their characters real and believable.
Yes, this is a review of the series rather than the DVD. I am no acoustic engineer; just happy to be able to see it. I am very happy to find that this series will be available on DVD. The last two episodes were never shown in my area, and I believed that it was not successful. Now I hear there will be a season two. Good.
A Look into the Biker Lifestyle,
By C. Barker “DJBiker” (Tennessee) -
I can’t wait for this season to be released on DVD! I DVR’d the first 9 episodes of season 1 and then after deciding not to watch them at all, deleted the first 7! What a mistake! I watched the 8th and 9th as an afterthought one night with nothing else to see, and MAN AM I HOOKED! I finished out the season on the edge of my seat, and can’t believe that I missed 7 episodes out of carelessness!
My local station has shown episodes 1-4 and then are only showing episodes 9 and 11 before Season 2 Starts!!!!!!
Get these, they are a keeper and you will want to watch over and over again!
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