Rectify

It isn't just good TV, it's revelatory TV. The genre's biggest potential game changer since AMC debuted the one-two punch of "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad."

There's not a bad performance to be had in Rectify, which even features Hal Holbrook as Holden's former lawyer. But it's Young, whose character veers from a deceptive lethargy to moments of dry humor, who carries every scene he's in as he finds ways to allow us glimpses of the man still imprisoned behind the mask.

It's a powerful, emotionally engaging character study.

Although its principal supporting players are first-rate, Rectify would be lost in transition without Young’s stellar work in the lead role. It’s a fearless, fully immersed, Emmy caliber performance tinged with sadness, searching, primitive pleasures and even a little comedy.

For some, the six hours of Rectify will feel like a very slow sentence indeed. For others, the performances, the very clear sense of time and place, the beautiful images and the thoughtful things the series has to say about life, death and spirituality will feel like no time at all.

The good news is that this contemplative, utterly engrossing and frequently gorgeous character study achieves and then surpasses both of those goals [justify the network's foray into the field while living up to the Sundance brand] over the course of its initial six episode season.

It's not easy viewing, but this series offers smart, challenging, character-driven drama at its finest.

By the standards of most TV crime stories, the meditative Rectify may instead seem like too little. But it’s entrancing at showing how, in some circumstances, just getting through a day is drama enough.

Rectify is touching in so many ways, and the only drawback is that six hours is not nearly enough to tell this story, with an open-ended conclusion that's more disturbing than satisfying.

What makes Rectify so rich and compelling are the choices it makes to avoid predictability--not just in its bold choice of immersive pacing, but because it puts characters (and complicated ones) into what feels like a familiar story and makes it seem new.

Moody, dark yet at times poetic, this is TV made in the indie-film style, without pretense. Adult, premium-cable caliber without the visual excess.

The series has a cinematic feel, with plenty of stand-alone, poignant moments punctuating each episode.

Takes time to get into, but once in, you're in.

It’s not rushing us to the next plot point. It’s content to be present. It breathes.

The cast is stellar, you can almost feel the Georgia heat; a show that explores the consequences of violence, rather than serving up a gruesome pile of it, could hardly be more welcome at this moment, but the going is methodical and slow and sometimes painful.

Flawless production design and lush cinematography make Rectify visually stunning, but its simmering mystery and artfully depicted dysfunction make every scene hum with tension.

Throughout, Rectify maintains a remarkable rhythm--somewhere between reverie and anxiety. It takes its time, exploring characters' faces and gestures, their personal tics and their relationships--a glimpse into their souls.

Rectify is an ambitious and eloquent series, vivid in its portraiture of family and local citizens who don't know quite what to make of Daniel (a proclivity the film seems to share)--assurance enough of an engrossing six hours.

Rectify is a more-than-credible addition to the DVR menu--one more worthy option as we escape into our own little electronic cells of solitary amusement.

[Rectify] feels damply airless--the tension might be ripped open at any moment by a thunderclap of revelation.... It's a disturbing, impressive performance [from Aden Young as Daniel]. [13 May 2013, p.49]

While Rectify's slow-burn progression may lessen the impact of its sparse anecdotal twists, the series is nevertheless peppered with an array of beautiful wide shots of rural Georgia.

Rectify's many stories are strung together with a wonderful, airy pacing--all hail the slow-TV movement!--that lends a haunting backdrop to the story of a man who may not be able to find a life, even after avoiding death.

On occasion, McKinnon--perhaps in his appreciation of the actor--lingers too long on Young, as if we’re not already completely aware that he is dazed and confused. It unintentionally undermines Young’s performance. But for the most part, in Young’s Daniel we can clearly see what it means to mystified by freedom, to be on the outside and yet shackled on the inside.

It's admirable that the production wanted to be so truthful to the experiences of the damaged men who emerge from long prison stints, but there are a few too many languid shots of Daniel staring at things that mystify him. But it's worth sticking with Rectify, which often achieves a tone of conflicted, bittersweet sincerity.

It’s the kind of deft touch that makes Rectify, a series with a very measured pace, stay lively enough so we’re willing to wait for something to happen.

If Rectify was winnowed down to the length of a feature film and shown at a festival, we could better judge whether or not it accomplishes what it set out to do. Delivered this way, as a meandering, weekly TV show (with commercial breaks), it has spread itself too thin.