In the smog-choked alleyways of modern Los Angeles, Apple TV+’s “Sugar” casts a stylish retrograde light upon that most celebrated of genres – film noir. This wistful ode to hard-boiled mysteries of yesteryear stars Colin Farrell as the enigmatic John Sugar, a private investigator whose penchant for dapper suits and whiskey-laced brooding is matched only by his encyclopedic love of classic cinema.
The mystery propelling Sugar’s tale – locating a Hollywood scion’s wayward addict granddaughter – is but a neo-noir pastiche paying homage to the likes of The Big Sleep and Chinatown. Yet beneath its fedora-tipping reverence for noir archetypes, Sugar inches towards more subversive territory. Creator Mark Protosevich salts the moody proceedings with winks to films covering paranoia, sci-fi, and beyond, hinting at deeper mysteries inextricable from Sugar’s fractured psyche.
So while the City of Angels’ sunbeams play in partial shadow, casting hard rubrics of light and shadow copied straight from filmographies past, there courses through Sugar’s neon-glazed heart a palpable sense that not all is as it seems. The game, as they say, is utterly afoot.
A Sordid Hollywood Tapestry Unravels
At its core, “Sugar” is propelled by a seemingly straightforward mystery – the disappearance of Olivia, granddaughter to famed Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell). Tasked with locating this wayward heiress is the show’s magnetic lead, John Sugar (Colin Farrell) – a dapper, old-school private eye haunted by his own sister’s vanishing years prior.
As Sugar pursues leads from Olivia’s slimy producer father Bernie to her washed-up former child star brother Davy, a sordid underbelly of depravity and corruption across Hollywood’s elite slowly reveals itself. Yet this is merely the lurid tapestry upon which grander mysteries are woven.
For beneath his beguiling noir affectations, Sugar himself is an enigma wrapped in a riddle. Is he simply a lush cinephile turned gumshoe, or something…more? His peculiar tics, from an inexplicable high metabolism to an obsession with the moon’s phases, hint at darker secrets kept hidden.
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This overarching conspiracy shrouding Sugar’s true nature is unhurriedly teased across the season’s eight episodes. Fleeting clues about shadowy organizations and “societies” are artfully sprinkled amid the hard-boiled escapades. Just as his investigation delves deeper, so too does the mystery of just who – or what – John Sugar truly is.
Savoring the Sublime in Sugar’s Sinful Delights
For any connoisseur of film noir’s sordid beauties, “Sugar” is a veritable banquet. Director Fernando Meirelles crafts visuals so gorgeously smoldering, so entrancingly shadowed, that you’ll be scanning every stunningly composed frame for the lush contours of an Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth. Drenched in hard-boiled ambience from its smoky jazz licks to its relentless slant of harsh Los Angeles sunlight, the show’s aesthetic grandeur utterly intoxicates.
At the molten core of this stylistic rhapsody blazes Colin Farrell as our acerbic antihero Sugar. With a boozy baritone casually rattling off wry witticisms, Farrell imbues his PI with a sense of haunted gravitas that prevents even the most rote of noir tropes from calcifying. There’s a melancholy mystery powering his every move, a fractured psyche yearning to unearth its own missing pieces. It’s an utterly transfixing turn.
Surrounding Farrell is an impeccably curated supporting cast bringing further hues of emotional depth amidst the sin and squalor. As a sultry rocker afloat in addiction’s doldrums, Amy Ryan radiates vulnerability under her coarse exterior. James Cromwell is all paternalistic gravitas as Farrell’s haunted client. And as Sugar’s handler, Kirby exudes a perfect yin to Farrell’s cynical yang – a humane conscience struggling to guide her troubled asset.
But for all its stylistic and performative triumphs, “Sugar’s” masterstroke remains its sui generis blending of genres. What begins as a pitch-perfect noir fable slowly shapeshifts into something more cosmic in scope, dancing deftly between psychological drama, sci-fi, and terrifying existential inquiry. Just as the viewer surrenders to the spell of a bygone Hollywood fantasy, Sugar rips away the curtain to reveal unsettling visions beyond.
It’s an audacious high-wire act, equal parts thrilling and unsettling in the profundities it posits about our very natures. Much as Sugar pierces the gossamer veil of Hollywood make-believe, so too does the show take a metaphysical sledgehammer to its own genre conventions. And in obliterating our assumptions of what to expect, “Sugar” achieves a sublime unpredictability few shows could conceive, let alone execute.
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Sour Notes in Sugar’s Delicacies
For all its intoxicating sights and sounds, “Sugar” is not without its saccharine missteps. Chiefly, the mystery catalyzing Sugar’s investigation – the vanishing of Hollywood heiress Olivia – proves an underwhelming macguffin. While her disappearance enables a winding journey into La La Land’s sordid underbelly, the dramatic stakes are dulled by Olivia’s own vapid characterization and a general lack of urgency from those who should most covet her safety.
Similarly unfulfilling is the show’s malnourished worldbuilding around Sugar’s shadowy “organization.” While hints are tantalizing about cryptic societies with unknown agendas, the season’s flirtations leave the audience as starved for context as Sugar himself. If this mythology is meant to be the show’s narrative engine, it’s one in dire need of fuel.
Pacing too proves problematic, with Sugar’s serpentine revelations about its own genre-warping reality dribbled out with excruciating lack of urgency. By the time its most seismic twist arrives, it feels less an ingenious revelation than an inevitable inevitability – one that may have benefited from a more accelerated unspooling.
Certain supporting players also struggle to emerge as more than background garnish in this rich narrative bouillabaisse. Emmy winner Anna Gunn is transparently squandered. Former child star Davy, despite the charismatic efforts of Nate Corddry, amounts to little more than sneering comic relief in service of lazy Hollywood satire. For a show so raptly fixated on transcendental themes of identity and meaning, too many characters seem discardable ciphers along Sugar’s path toward self-actualization.
A Sumptuous Feast for Cinephiles
In the end, “Sugar” is a delectable amuse-bouche for any cinephile with a taste for the hardest of noir’s hard-boiled trappings. Its mastery of mood, style, and fizzy snap dialogue makes it a loving ode to the Chandlers and Wilders of Hollywood past. Yet its audacious blending of neo-noir grit with mind-bending metaphysics ensures it’s no mere museum piece.
As a visual experience, the show is a narcotic all its own. Meirelles’ lush cinematography leans so engagingly into deep chiaroscuro shadows that even the most mundane establishing shots become sumptuous works of art. And when paired with Farrell’s gruff magnestism and the impeccable supporting ensemble, “Sugar” exudes a level of pure cool that will captivate even the most neutral observers.
Where the show falters is in the pedestrian machinations of its MacGuffin-fueled mystery. For all its hype around a twisted Hollywood conspiracy, the disappearance launching Sugar’s investigation proves a mere Trojan horse – an obligatory vessel from which to unleash the show’s more outré existential meditations. Those seeking a more procedural or plottish crime yarn may struggle to stay invested.
For those willing to surrender to “Sugar’s” delirious genre alchemy, however, the rewards are plentiful. By fearlessly dismantling expectations of what a neo-noir should be, it elevates itself to the stuff of a new classic – a mind-bending inquiry into the very nature of identity that still respects the sordid thrills of a bygone Hollywood it so clearly adores. Miss it at your own peril, starkids. Decadent Indulgence or Overcooked Folly?
Savoring the Last Bites
For this gourmand critic, “Sugar” proved a decadent feast that was utterly engrossing even when its flavors grew uneven. As both a lushly rendered valentine to Old Hollywood classics and an audacious high-wire act splicing neo-noir with metaphysical Head Trip Cinema, the show delighted in confounding expectations at every sumptuous turn.
Its profound strengths were manifold – from the exquisite visuals and Farrell’s brooding magnetism to the ingenious ways it bent genre conventions until they radically reshaped our perceptions of what the show even was. Watching Sugar’s deliciously staged mysteries unspool only to have reality itself torn asunder by the season’s gut-punch revelations was a truly subversive thrill.
Yet the main course left something to be desired, with an underwhelming MacGuffin mystery and thinly sketched characters taking a backseat to the show’s admirably lofty ambitions of cosmic profundity. Supporting players like Gunn felt wasted while the worldbuilding around Sugar’s organization remained tantalizingly scarce.
If renewed, one hopes the menu might be more carefully curated in a second season to provide a richer balance of neo-noir grit and mind-melting supernatural wonder. Because for all its faults, Sugar has whetted this critic’s appetite for more of its sinfully delectable charms. I’ll happily have seconds.
The Review
Sugar
With its stylish visuals, outstanding lead performance, and brazen genre-blending ambition, "Sugar" is a decadently rich neo-noir experience that forgoes familiar comforts to audaciously explore deeper existential riddles. While its central mystery feels undercooked and some characters go to waste, the show succeeds as a bold ode to classic Hollywood filtered through a kaleidoscopic lens of cosmic profundity. For those with a taste for the unpredictable, it's a sinful delight well worth savoring.
PROS
- Stylish visuals and cinematography evoking a noir atmosphere
- Excellent lead performance from Colin Farrell as John Sugar
- Strong supporting cast like Amy Ryan, James Cromwell, Kirby
- Pays respectful homage to classic noir films through references and clips
- Genre-bending twist that makes the show unpredictable and thought-provoking
- Brooding, cinematic tone and mood
CONS
- Main mystery plot about the missing woman feels thin and uncompelling
- Worldbuilding around Sugar's secret organization is undercooked
- Pacing struggles as it takes too long to get to the pivotal twist
- Some supporting characters like Anna Gunn are wasted and underutilized
- May be too slowly paced or oblique for mainstream audience expectations
