The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

Because it’s so great at reclaiming an era we almost forgot, The Assassination of Gianni Versace easily stands as first must-see offering of 2018. It checks all the boxes needed for the perfect winter miniseries and there’s not an inch of it that isn’t stylish.

I’m not sure The Assassination of Gianni Versace manages to add contemporary political and cultural resonance to its serial killer story as effectively [as The People v. O.J. Simpson]. ... But The Assassination of Gianni Versace is nonetheless extremely insightful, as well as consistently entertaining.

To me, the show is both balm and menace, lurid exploitation and primal scream. The series doesn’t have the seismic, prestige heft of People v. O.J., and it doesn’t share its forebear’s piercing intelligence. But in its messy and obliterating swirl, The Assassination of Gianni Versace does something ambitious and rattling. It frames a gay disaster as an intrinsically American one, binding personal values with national ones, tethering one sense of self-worth to another.

Versace marries the extravagant with the violent. Even when the series stretches its plot too thin, bold direction mostly makes up for it, ensuring that there is always something to look at, either beautiful or repulsive. The series is grounded by sublime performances from its cast.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a formidable piece of work, brilliant in its characterizations and harrowing in its depictions of the amorality of American culture's dark underside.

“Versace" is not perfect--some episodes meander a bit and anytime the story takes viewers back to Versace and away from the other victims, it becomes less compelling--but it marks an early, strong entry for one of the best series of 2018.

Although her time on-screen is limited, Cruz makes some strong impressions as the ever-demanding Donatella Versace.

The details are less familiar than the O.J. Simpson trial, the subject of Crime Story's acclaimed first season, which makes the reverse chronology of the parallel narratives even more compelling and disturbing. [22 Jan - 4 Feb 2018, p.12]

The story is told in reverse chronological order, jumping back and forth, here and there, across the trail of Cunanan’s various crimes--can sometimes seem gratuitously confusing, but once you get used to its rhythm, this American Crime Story has an irresistible pull.

Fascinating, creepy. ... The Assassination of Gianni Versace does not justify Cunanan--he is, always, self-pitying and lazy, unwilling to choose a better course--but it does more than simply try to comprehend him. Occasionally it has compassion for him.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace hangs together imperfectly, and its lines don’t quite flow with the level of unified elegance of its predecessor. Calling to mind the designer’s signature medallion, it is its own Medusa, beauty and horror in one long, complicated gaze. It doesn’t match its predecessor’s power to transfix the audience, but it is definitely worth seeing.

Assassination may not be as enjoyable to watch as O.J., but it’s striking to see how thoughtfully all involved approach a very different story in a way that gives it its own tone, its own themes, and its own grandeur. This is a more difficult but more ambitious work, and it stands as a worthy companion.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t for everyone, either, but it’s sincere and committed as it follows its own path.

The narrative focus on Cunanan--he’s the story--is what holds this 10-part saga together, and it does so compellingly throughout.

More saliently, the heavy-handedness slows down the story--or belies the fact that compared to “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has much less story to tell. ... But with an array of fantastic performances and an eye to exploring the complexity of contemporary queerness, American Crime Story has produced another interesting history play to chew on--one with a lingering, intriguing aftertaste.

If it doesn't rise to the same level as its predecessor in terms of racing through an airport to catch the next episode, "Versace" ultimately aces the watch-ability test with flying colors.

The series is defined by an unsettling unreality that evokes the morbid interest that surrounded these events in real time. With its dogged adherence to authenticity, it creates the feeling of witnessing something illicit, suggesting that we're complicit in fulfilling Cunanan's quest to make an impression, by opting to relive his spree at all.

Sorry, not as good as “O.J.,” but Criss turns in a dynamic performance in service of a desperately sad story.

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace plays better as parable than reportage. While it never quite becomes the twin narrative of Versace’s and Cunanan’s lives that’s hinted at in the early episodes, it continues using them as mirror images of one another: creator and destroyer, mother’s apprentice and father’s favored child, doting brother and prodigal son.

If O.J. was an epic, this is a short-story collection. Some hit, some miss, all share a heartbreaking theme. ... Oddly, Versace is best when it leaves Versace behind.

The quality of Smith’s script is honored effectively through the direction of the series, by Matt Bomer, Gwyneth Horder-Payton and series creator Ryan Murphy, and through exquisite performances, beginning with that of Darren Criss. ... Ramírez is equally convincing as Versace. His physical resemblance to the designer is uncanny, but the performance is what makes the story so credible.

After a while, as powerful as Criss’ performance is, even the Cunanan scenes start to feel like overkill: repetitive and methodical, to the point of becoming dull. There’s just not enough story here to justify nine hours of television. ... Overall, Versace ends up being an intensive character study of a complicated killer... and not much else.

The show is clearly hoping that audiences will share that stereotypically Italian trait as it channels Federico Fellini and The Godfather. Murphy is more of a workman than a high artist, though, and his meanderings here muddle an intrinsically strange, socially resonant story.

Versace sets out to make viewers care about a case most of them will barely remember. This is the show’s greatest challenge and its sharpest point.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace juggles three storylines and an innovative crimes-in-reverse structure in a way that yields a disturbing character study and an assortment of strong performances. Still, through eight of the nine episodes, it isn't quite as convincing or thematically unified as The People v. O. J. Simpson.

Versace admirably (and more effectively) explores how Cunanan’s victims formed connections with him and why Cunanan may have finally snapped, even if it’s a less cohesive and richly detailed season than “The People vs. O.J.” ... [Darren Criss] has moments of raw power, he just doesn’t elevate the material the way Sarah Paulson, Sterling K. Brown, and David Schwimmer did for “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.”

Fascinating yet repellent. ... Is it about beauty? Is it about psychosis? Is it about gay rights? Yes to all that, but never effectively.

If you can view Cunanan not as the protagonist of Assassination, but its connective tissue, then it begins to feel more satisfying as a series of tragic vignettes about what it was like to be gay in America in the ’90s. ... But Cunanan’s just not interesting enough to support so much screen time, especially because we don’t really get to understand what makes him tick until the story’s nearly over. And even then, it’s hard to find empathy, given what we know about all the horror he inflicted.

[The Versace] sections of the story are stronger ... Reducing [Cunanan] to a morality-play story of a boy warped by his secrets is unsatisfying. It’s enough to make it relevant to an empathetic contemporary audience, but it’s not enough for a drama that uses the names and personae of people who really lived.

Ramirez does an outstanding job capturing a gentle man and his passion for his work. Penelope Cruz (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) co-stars as his doting sister Donatella, who has absolutely no use for Antonio. (That animosity is well documented.) Criss’ portrayal is brittle and needy (and not such a far stretch from the character he played on Murphy’s “Glee”).

There are many incredibly suspenseful and deeply fascinating stretches. The problem is that fascination is wrapped around frustration in this second "American Crime Story," which is wearisomely lighter on details and slower of pace.

If The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story were a little more interesting, maybe it would be that lightning rod. But instead it’s a surprisingly inert, if lushly imagined, tale.

A manipulative sociopath and compulsive liar, Cunanan is a tough protagonist to invest in for nine episodes, and while Criss makes him suitably unsettling, the show too often skews more toward the sleazy excesses of a ’90s erotic thriller than the methodical refinement of something like The Talented Mr. Ripley.