Love & Death

Although it’s skillfully shot and exquisitely acted, it presents the facts as they were laid out by those involved with very little editorialization beyond the basic dramatization required of the medium. This may deter viewers who are more used to the salacious tone in which these kinds of stories are often told. It comes down to whether you like your true crime with or without the pulp.

It’s so far the fine acting that elevates this above shlock.

Aside from a layered performance by Olsen that easily surpasses the wig-forward acting of Candy’s miscast Jessica Biel, what sets Love & Death apart from its predecessor, and so many other superficial, ripped-from-the-headlines murder shows (Dahmer—Monster, The Thing About Pam, The Serpent), is Kelley’s refusal to reduce real people to cartoon killers or weirdos or fools.

Olsen becomes increasingly riveting as “Love & Death” unfolds, forcing us to question how much we should like, forgive, or understand her. I’m not sure we ever will. But we’ll clearly continue to be fascinated by her.

However odd the case, the series starts to assume the shape of a procedural. It remains compelling, but it loses the interest in the details of its story's time and place that sets the earlier episodes apart. Still, Olsen alone provides a reason to watch.

“Love & Death” works as well as it does thanks to Olsen’s controlled performance.

At seven episodes, the HBO Max series overstays its own welcome but its two aces in the hole are Elizabeth Olsen as the to-the-point Montgomery, who has it all but desires to spice up her life, and Tom Pelphrey as flashy attorney/church member Don Crowder.

Elizabeth Olsen’s measured performance as Candy makes it difficult to penetrate her psyche, though we see glimpses of her tightly wound persona from time to time. Still, “Love & Death” rarely goes beyond a filmed timeline of events that are all too familiar to us by now.

While Love & Death works overtime to present Candy sympathetically—we see how frustrated and trapped she feels in a life that offers her little but ever-increasing expectations about who she should be and what she should do—her victim, Betty, isn’t offered anywhere close to the same depth or interiority.

Olsen delivers a Candy who’s human and credible (warmer, twitchier than Biel’s). If I have a problem, it’s with Betty, who feels just a little underwritten. Call me old-fashioned, but victims shouldn’t be sidelined in their own tragic stories.

Incredibly compelling in its most shocking moments, but a little slow otherwise, Love & Death lives and dies by Elizabeth Olsen’s excellent, charismatic central performance.

It doesn’t expand our understanding of anyone. It makes us voyeurs without a redemptive aspect. And it makes Betty – especially here, where she is notably underwritten – no more than a plot point. Some stories should perhaps be left in peace.

Ultimately, “Love & Death” has the credentials, performances and production values to elevate the story above the leering exploitation that marks the worst of the field. ... But at the end of the day, “Love & Death” does turn real people into exaggerated, if empathetically rendered, versions of themselves.

Glossy and engaging. ... Too often, though, Kelley’s latest has nothing especially fascinating to say about its protagonist, nor anything novel to add to the conversation about her infamous encounter. It leaves one wanting more, and not in the way it intends.

If Love & Death cannot quite meet Olsen at her level (this is the kind of series that could’ve done with fewer montages no matter how many great needle drops it gifts us in the process), that may well be due to its generic constraints.

The show seems most alive in dealing with Candy and Allan’s affair, as if the killing is the thing that got a greenlight, but not something worth exploring in great depth. Whether you know the story from previous articles and dramatizations, or it’s brand-new to you, Love & Death never really justifies why all these talented people have come together to re-create this particular crime.

Despite generous pacing and some fine lead performances, his [David E. Kelley's] show has too little light to shed on its notorious central case.

Olsen works hard to imbue her character with more nuance as the strain of events begins to grind Candy down. But the series itself seems content simply to recreate the events of her case rather than explore them in any deeper psychological or thematic fashion. After seven hours, we end up with no more insight into what happened on that fateful day in Wylie, Texas than if we had just stuck to the Wikipedia page.

Love & Death is at its best when it’s using the framing of a sensational true-crime case to explore more general human experience: malaise, transgression, the stifle of social order. ... After Betty’s death, though, the series loses its way. What had once been a finely tuned character study becomes wooden and formulaic. ... Love & Death ultimately has no argument, no salient reason to exist beyond the titillation it wisely avoids in its first few episodes.

With “Love and Death,” it’s clearer than ever that ground is wearing thin, and he [David E. Kelley] either needs to embrace the courtroom drama genre with renewed gusto, or try something totally different. There’s simply nothing worth seeing here.