Get Shorty

In short, a lot is very right with Get Shorty, which may well come calling again during next year’s awards season.

Romano is perfectly cast precisely because this is the character he knows how to play. With a gritty, energetic, and page-turning tale to work with, Miles is a great host for the series’ best moments.

As a hangdog hitman and a long-suffering auteur, O’Dowd and Romano complement each other. Is Hollywood more cutthroat than a drug empire? This series might have something to say about that. Epix’s Get Shorty is worth having.

This pilot does enough to have Leonard fans sticking around for more "Action!" [11 Aug 2017, p.53]

It's less a remake of the Elmore Leonard classic than a Fargo-style homage, capturing a tone of heartfelt whimsy and graphic brutality. ... It's bloody terrific. [21 Aug - 3 Sep 2017, p.12]

It’s well-made and beautifully played, and one welcomes, for a change, the story of a person attempting to pull himself out of a life of crime instead of one sliding into it. We have had quite enough of those.

Get Shorty, a dark and satisfying 10-episode series premiering Sunday on Epix, makes a persuasive case for recycling. Based primarily in spirit on the 1990 Elmore Leonard novel, the series is a fine upgrade from the almost forgettable 1995 film version.

Mr. O’Dowd is a delight as we watch Miles get sucked into the hell that Hollywood can be. And the series made an inspired choice by casting Ray Romano as Rick, a failing producer whose help Miles seeks. The two, Droll and Droller, pair deliciously, but they don’t hog the proceedings, leaving plenty of room for all sorts of other colorful characters to make an impression.

Get Shorty isn’t in much danger of challenging Justified as the best TV adaptation of Leonard’s work, but as comfort viewing in the dog days of August, it gets the job done.

The premiere episode fires on all cylinders. While the second and third are very good, they plateau a bit.

Get Shorty is an intriguing, curious new show. ... Get Shorty is a little wobbly in the quality of the writing.

The dark humor and bursts of bloody action will satisfy some viewers, but the pacing is so leisurely and the characters are such sad sacks that Get Shorty can feel like a chore.

Creator Davey Holmes (Shameless, In Treatment) was wise to not aim directly at the movie, but his replacement ideas are a mixed bag.

The showbiz material is pretty thin, and much of the series takes place in dusty desert locations (shot in New Mexico), focusing on tired crime-drama devices. There’s none of the playful humor of Sonnenfeld’s film (there’s barely any humor at all), or the sly cleverness of Leonard’s crime novels (captured much more effectively in the Leonard-based Justified).

A movie about movies--or a show about movies--succeeds when it is itself sharper and funnier than most other fare available, when it can spin circles around a basic B-plot. Get Shorty, the show, looks and feels a lot like everything else--expensive, but flat.

The fatal flaw here may actually be the hour-long format: Get Shorty could maybe work as a rapid-fire half-hour comedy, but at 60 minutes each, the episodes feel bloated and sluggish as they drag their feet getting to the good stuff.

By refusing to either challenge their own perspective or get into the weeds of why the big studios are in such dire straits and mostly release market-tested dreck, Get Shorty pigeonholes itself into mediocrity, something that neither Chili Palmer nor Miles Daly can abide by.