For the second time this year, Colin Farrell proves he is one of the finest actors on our time. Earlier he starred in the role of the versatile detective who is adept at finding the lost while keeping his mind and health sharp in “Sugar” for Apple TV. Now he joins the ranks of actors who played Oswald Cobblepot, better known at The Penguin from Batman cartoon and movie lore.
Farrell has the features of Cobblepot with the the costume effects Danny DeVito and Burgess Meredith used in “Batman” movies and on television. His Penguin is not so much a caricature as a grown man who has survived in Gotham City’s highest criminal circles. In the new series, “The Penguin,” on Max, he is on the verge of playing two major mob families against each other to supersede both as the head of regionwide misdoing.
Farrell is amazing as he shows Cobblepot’s coarseness and self-deprecation while illustrating his brilliance at strategy and diplomacy. He even reveals some unexpected sentimentality, especially in scenes with Cobblepot’s mother — the wily Deirdre O’Connell — and a kid he could have killed but enlists to be his chauffeur and protege (Rhenzy Feliz). Although a constant Batman reader in my D.
C. comic collecting youth, I have become immune to the spate of shows built on characters from the D.C.
and Marvel canons. They seem to be competing against one another for which can be darker and make its title character more complex. The humor, creativity and good old evil of.
