The Wire - The Complete First Season
starring: Dominic West, Sonja Sohn, Jr. Larry Gilliard, Wendell Pierce, Idris Elba
directed by: Clark Johnson
directed by: Clark Johnson
List Price: $59.98
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780783127927
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0783127928
Item Dimensions:
Label: HBO Home Video
Languages:
Manufacturer: HBO Home Video
MPN: HBOD98873D
Number Of Items: 5
Publisher: HBO Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 12, 2004
Running Time: 775 minutes
Studio: HBO Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: June 02, 2002
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 06/06/2006 Run time: 780 minutes Rating: Nr
Amazon.com:
After one episode of The Wire you'll be hooked. After three, you'll be astonished by the precision of its storytelling. After viewing all 13 episodes of the HBO series' remarkable first season, you'll be cheering a bona-fide American masterpiece. Series creator David Simon was a veteran crime reporter from The Baltimore Sun who cowrote the book that inspired TV's Homicide, and cowriter Ed Burns was a Baltimore cop, lending impeccable street-cred to an inner-city Baltimore saga (and companion piece to The Corner) that Simon aptly describes as "a visual novel" and "a treatise on institutions and individuals" as opposed to a conventional good-vs.-evil police procedural. Owing a creative debt to the novels of Richard Price (especially Clockers), the series opens as maverick Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, in a star-making role) is tapping into a vast network of drugs and death around southwest Baltimore's deteriorating housing projects. With a mandate to get results ASAP, a haphazard team is assembled to join McNulty's increasingly complex investigation, built upon countless hours of electronic surveillance.
The show's split-perspective plotting is so richly layered, so breathtakingly authentic and based on finely drawn characters brought to life by a perfect ensemble cast, that it defies concise description. Simon, Burns, and their cowriters control every intricate aspect of the unfolding epic; directors are top-drawer (including Clark Johnson, helmer of The Shield's finest episodes), but they are servants to the story, resulting in a TV series like no other: unpredictable, complicated, and demanding the viewer's rapt attention, The Wire is "an angry show" (in Simon's words) that refuses to comfort with easy answers to deep-rooted societal problems. Moral gray zones proliferate in a universe where ruthless killers have a logical code, and where the cops are just as ambiguous as their targets. That ambiguity extends to the ending as well; season 1 leaves several issues unresolved, leaving you begging for the even more impressive developments that await in season 2. --Jeff Shannon
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- Engrossing television -- rich characterizations, complex and exciting storytelling, strong visual senseThis is great stuff. I can't really add to what others have said here, except to say that this is definitely a series to watch. It's got everything you'd want from a crime drama like CSI, but much more. The characters are interesting: nobody fits an easy stereotype, and no one is simply a good guy or a bad guy. There are several overlapping story arcs, but they all fit together in a complex puzzle. There are hints of many much larger storylines that could be followed up on, but aren't -- it ... Read More
Rating:
- "The" Series to watch for good law enforcement drama!!I am in the business - I run a Tac Squad. Normally, I stay away from this kind of show telling folks that if I wanted a slice of real life, I would go sit on a street corner. Well... I found my exception. This first season caught me hook, line, and sinker. The dialogue is not far off from what I hear on the streets 6 years and a couple of thousand miles away. The networks, lookouts, interviews, interactions between agencies - all of it is dead on (except for the drinkin, carousing, etc...!!!). ... Read More
Rating:
- Flawlessly enjoyableThe Wire is, at first glance, Yet Another Cop Show, about a group of disparate and conflicted police officers working to bring down criminals who are often not much better than they are. Yawn. However, there are two things that mean that people should take this seriously. Firstly, it's made by HBO who, up to a couple of years ago anyway, seemed physically incapable of making something unless it was absolutely gripping and awesome. Secondly, it's the creation of former police writer and journalist David ... Read More
Rating:
- Law enforcement drama with a real edgeReality bites. As one of the protagonists' mothers asks in the final episode of the season `what's right?' In Baltimore's narcotic investigation unit it is hard to say. Nearly everyone has a little dirt. Most of the bad guys were just born into doing what they do with no way out but to take a bullet or a stretch on the inside. Narcos bust for headlines to make rank. Dealers are in the game because they have no other way. Judges turn coat because it is election time, money goes missing, burnt out cops get ... Read More
Rating:
- Very Good Crime DramaHBO series are unsensored television. That's a good medium when you want to tell a complicated and often ugly story. The Wire leverages those advantages to produce one of the best crime dramas ever filmed.
It lived up to the hype of all the previous reviewers so I'm on to season two now.
