Bloodline

Mendelsohn is superb as Danny, who shifts between vulnerability and venality with a swiftness that will leave you breathless. And there is an authenticity to the interplay between these adult siblings, freighted with unspoken accusations, long-held grudges, bitter rivalries and yes, even love, hinted at in flashbacks and fleshed out in a shocking flash-forward.

It’s quite engrossing and addictive.

Through it all, Bloodline sucks you in and keeps your nerves in a vise.

Chalk up another forceful punch with Bloodline, a riveting, superbly cast slow-burn family drama set between the oceanfront paradise and the murky mangrove swamps of the Florida Keys.

Bloodline unfolds like a good novel. It’s so well acted, that like a good book, it’s hard to stay away from it

There are times when Bloodline feels closer to a soap like How To Get Away With Murder than the sunshine state noir it wants to be. But three episodes in, owing to quick plotting and strong performances, I'm hooked. [20/27 Mar 2015, p.86]

Bloodline is well worth your time.

The show doles out morsels of information slowly, like a trail of bread crumbs, which makes for a satisfying viewing experience and feeds your curiosity while making you question other aspects even more.

As madly tied to one another as they are, the Rayburns are, in the first few episodes, at least, a little hard to care about. Yet there is enough happening by the third episode that I will definitely watch the fourth, just to see what might or might not happen, what herrings might be red, and what surprises might be truly surprising.

The writers of Bloodline apparently don't trust us in the deep water yet. But it's worth wading into, anyway.

Who in this family has been plotting what against whom? That this quickly becomes, for the viewer, an urgent question says all that’s necessary about the story’s magnetic pull.

At the outset, Bloodline doesn’t even make clear if anyone has been murdered, let alone who might be missing. But it does establish that it may be well worth waiting to find out.

An intricately drawn and superbly cast portrait of a family in crisis that evokes Raymond Carver and James Dickey, Bloodline has the feel, the imaginative reach and aesthetic depth and resonance of a novel.

The premiere is weighed down with a lot of character set-up, taking place mostly at the reunion and focusing on the dynamic between John and Danny. While the next two episodes are tighter, thanks in no small part to an interesting narrative twist that ratchets up tension in the family, there are things that work right from the very beginning, mostly thanks to the cast.

Nothing here is especially groundbreaking. But Bloodline smartly dives into its soapy doings with multiple plots, as well as an impressive acting roster.

At least in the first three episodes provided for review, what the Kesslers and Zelman don't seem to quite realize is how much of a narcotic this setting actually turns out to be. The story is also often languid to the point of stationary.

The three episodes made available to critics are instantly compelling, taut with edge-of-your-seat drama and thick with credible melodrama.

Too much of those first nine episodes is taken up with vague hints of something dramatic happening just over the horizon.... Chandler, Mendelsohn, and Spacek all give searing performances. In particular, the final confrontation between Chandler and Mendelsohn is filled with meaty moments that both actors sink their teeth into.

It takes a full three episodes (the full extent of what Netflix gave critics to watch in advance) for characters to develop more than a single bland personality trait each.

There’s not a lackluster performance among the superb cast members of Bloodline; Chandler and Cardellini, especially, are in top form. Nevertheless, it’s Mendelsohn, as Danny, who makes the best of a script that at times seems overly opaque.

It’s binge-worthy, make no mistake. But still, a few well-placed casual moments among family members would help, so that the story can breathe a bit, and so can we.

There's little urgency to the storytelling, which is as slow-paced and easy-breezy as lying in a hammock strung between two palm trees on a Key West beach.

For now, the new show seems more style over substance, parking a lot of actors I like in an attractive location and not giving most of them material that's up to their talents.

Bloodline creates a unique, insular world, but also one without the heartbeat that gave life to its alt-world, comedic brother [Arrested Development]. Rarely do we escape the distinctly depressed insular universe of the Reynolds' family, making for an experience both intoxicating and claustrophobic.

The problem with this promising but often forgettable mystery is ultimately simple: One never really feels the idiosyncratic heat. These pulp shenanigans fails to cohere as a distinctly unified vision.

The Rayburns are, to a tee, well-trod stereotypes. Their dialogue is often as two-dimensional as they are, and when it veers more toward the melo than the drama, Bloodline can get down right corny.

The biggest weakness of Bloodline is that the characters are types, straight down the line: the hardass dad, the soft-hearted mom, the peacemaker, the black sheep. And the scripts don’t do much to round them out.... They’re well-played types at least.

Despite some fine individual performances, the actors never collectively project a sense of family.

From a plot standpoint, Bloodline is completely flat, using its shifting timelines as a trick to make mundane developments seem more ominous than they really are.