Luke Cage Season 1 Review

 

What’s it about?

It is the story of Luke Cage, a man with superhuman strength and a mysterious past, who takes on Harlem’s crime bosses and stands up for the common man.

               When his mentor is killed, Luke decides to avenge his death by bringing down the people responsible, and in the process clean up the streets of Harlem. This includes a powerful mob boss, a cunning politician and a mysterious enemy. A painful and secretive past,  the mystery behind his abilities and finding inner peace makes up for the rest of the story.

What’s good?

The first seven episodes. It has a certain mood and style to it that is very refreshing. It gives us a terrific episode which covers the backstory of how Luke got his powers. These episodes have a gritty and realistic tone to them like the other Marvel/Netflix shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones and they work in the favor of the show.Also, the music used throughout the season is excellent.

What’s bad?

The lack of a proper antagonist. The show goes for a certain story-line for the first seven episodes setting up its characters and then changes abruptly. The gritty and realistic tone is suddenly abandoned for a more conventional and slightly campy one. The late introduction of a second villain and the whole Luke’s  family story-line seems forced and robs the viewer off the punch that the previous story had setup. The action, again, is patchy. Good in a few sequences and average in the others. Another problem is the pacing. Some of the episodes are quite slow. In fact there is an action sequence that has slow pacing which should not have been the case.

Performances

Mike Colter as Luke Cage takes some time getting used to, but succeeds in  creating a relatable, vulnerable and heroic character at the end of the day. He is the best part of the series. Simone Missick as Misty Knight, Mahershala Ali as CottonMouth and Alfre Woodard as Mariah Dillard get the best of the supporting roles and they sink their teeth into them and deliver great performances.

Erik LaRay Harvey as Diamondback was my main problem with this series. He brings a sense of camp to the proceedings which robs the series of its realistic tone and pushes it into slightly cartoony terrain.

Final Word

Luke Cage is an average superhero series that can be watched once if you have lot of free time.

Rating:

2.5 / 5 stars