Malice’s hard truth
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Once a generation, Hollywood produces a leading man whose face and eyes tell very different stories. Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Irons, even Jimmy Stewart: Each wears beneath his movie star looks a bone-deep suggestion of depravity and decay. Two weeks ago, I would have said that Gen Y’s representative on the list was Robert Pattinson, the vampiric star of Twilight and The Batman. I now know better. English comedian Jack Whitehall, at a glance the world’s handsomest man, has knocked Pattinson aside with all the grace of an out-of-control lorry. With apologies to Whitehall’s mother, romantic partner, and friends, the 37-year-old is clearly evil.
The tension between charisma and villainy is at the heart of Malice, Amazon’s six-episode saga of fanatical revenge. Whitehall’s character, Adam Healey, is a charming “manny” equally at ease quoting Shakespeare and whipping up brunch. He is also — how to put this? — a murderous degenerate set on ruining the lives of the Tanners, the jet-setting family for whom he works. The source of Adam’s hostility, kept hidden until the series finale, is interesting but beside the point. For most of the show’s run, the young man is simply Nemesis in the flesh, a being of such mythological fury that even to discuss his motives feels like an affront.
That viewers, too, are meant to hate the Tanners is a fact that does much to establish Malice’s tone. Played by David Duchovny, husband Jamie is the smirking embodiment of high finance, a heartless money man who lacks, by his own admission, any “tact, composure, or empathy.” Wife Nat (Carice van Houten), a Dutch-Parisian fashion designer living in London, is the kind of person whom right-populists call to mind when trying to defund NATO. Throw in three spoiled moppets, mostly forgettable, and one may find oneself standing too close to Malice’s blaring alarm. Narcissistic, ungrateful, and deeply sad, the Tanners are the ne plus ultra of petulant privilege. Just as significantly, however, they are an absurd and mean-spirited caricature of the upper crust.
David Duchovny and Carice van Houten in “Malice.” (Amazon MGM Studios)
It is perhaps surprising, given these depictions, that Malice struggles to decide between killing its targets and moving into their spare bedrooms. This is never truer than in the series’s early episodes, set and filmed on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades. There, amid blue-domed splendor, Jamie and family splash in an infinity pool between day-trips to a …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Once a generation, Hollywood produces a leading man whose face and eyes tell very different stories. Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Irons, even Jimmy Stewart: Each wears beneath his movie star looks a bone-deep suggestion of depravity and decay. Two weeks ago, I would have said that Gen Y’s representative on the list was Robert Pattinson, the vampiric star of Twilight and The Batman. I now know better. English comedian Jack Whitehall, at a glance the world’s handsomest man, has knocked Pattinson aside with all the grace of an out-of-control lorry. With apologies to Whitehall’s mother, romantic partner, and friends, the 37-year-old is clearly evil.
The tension between charisma and villainy is at the heart of Malice, Amazon’s six-episode saga of fanatical revenge. Whitehall’s character, Adam Healey, is a charming “manny” equally at ease quoting Shakespeare and whipping up brunch. He is also — how to put this? — a murderous degenerate set on ruining the lives of the Tanners, the jet-setting family for whom he works. The source of Adam’s hostility, kept hidden until the series finale, is interesting but beside the point. For most of the show’s run, the young man is simply Nemesis in the flesh, a being of such mythological fury that even to discuss his motives feels like an affront.
That viewers, too, are meant to hate the Tanners is a fact that does much to establish Malice’s tone. Played by David Duchovny, husband Jamie is the smirking embodiment of high finance, a heartless money man who lacks, by his own admission, any “tact, composure, or empathy.” Wife Nat (Carice van Houten), a Dutch-Parisian fashion designer living in London, is the kind of person whom right-populists call to mind when trying to defund NATO. Throw in three spoiled moppets, mostly forgettable, and one may find oneself standing too close to Malice’s blaring alarm. Narcissistic, ungrateful, and deeply sad, the Tanners are the ne plus ultra of petulant privilege. Just as significantly, however, they are an absurd and mean-spirited caricature of the upper crust.
David Duchovny and Carice van Houten in “Malice.” (Amazon MGM Studios)
It is perhaps surprising, given these depictions, that Malice struggles to decide between killing its targets and moving into their spare bedrooms. This is never truer than in the series’s early episodes, set and filmed on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades. There, amid blue-domed splendor, Jamie and family splash in an infinity pool between day-trips to a …
Malice’s hard truth
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Once a generation, Hollywood produces a leading man whose face and eyes tell very different stories. Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Irons, even Jimmy Stewart: Each wears beneath his movie star looks a bone-deep suggestion of depravity and decay. Two weeks ago, I would have said that Gen Y’s representative on the list was Robert Pattinson, the vampiric star of Twilight and The Batman. I now know better. English comedian Jack Whitehall, at a glance the world’s handsomest man, has knocked Pattinson aside with all the grace of an out-of-control lorry. With apologies to Whitehall’s mother, romantic partner, and friends, the 37-year-old is clearly evil.
The tension between charisma and villainy is at the heart of Malice, Amazon’s six-episode saga of fanatical revenge. Whitehall’s character, Adam Healey, is a charming “manny” equally at ease quoting Shakespeare and whipping up brunch. He is also — how to put this? — a murderous degenerate set on ruining the lives of the Tanners, the jet-setting family for whom he works. The source of Adam’s hostility, kept hidden until the series finale, is interesting but beside the point. For most of the show’s run, the young man is simply Nemesis in the flesh, a being of such mythological fury that even to discuss his motives feels like an affront.
That viewers, too, are meant to hate the Tanners is a fact that does much to establish Malice’s tone. Played by David Duchovny, husband Jamie is the smirking embodiment of high finance, a heartless money man who lacks, by his own admission, any “tact, composure, or empathy.” Wife Nat (Carice van Houten), a Dutch-Parisian fashion designer living in London, is the kind of person whom right-populists call to mind when trying to defund NATO. Throw in three spoiled moppets, mostly forgettable, and one may find oneself standing too close to Malice’s blaring alarm. Narcissistic, ungrateful, and deeply sad, the Tanners are the ne plus ultra of petulant privilege. Just as significantly, however, they are an absurd and mean-spirited caricature of the upper crust.
David Duchovny and Carice van Houten in “Malice.” (Amazon MGM Studios)
It is perhaps surprising, given these depictions, that Malice struggles to decide between killing its targets and moving into their spare bedrooms. This is never truer than in the series’s early episodes, set and filmed on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades. There, amid blue-domed splendor, Jamie and family splash in an infinity pool between day-trips to a …
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