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(More customer reviews)At first glance, Tom Fontana's extraordinary television series "Oz" seems to be a hyper-naturalistic view of the hellish life behind bars in American prisons. It is that, of course. But the title is a tip-off that Fontana also has larger, more mythic concerns on his mind. His tortured Catholicism plays a role in the world-view presented here, as it did in his wonderful earlier series "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "St. Elsewhere." It turns out that Oz (the prison) is a kind of purgatory where wounded spirits struggle with good and evil. Even the best (like administators Tim McManus and Leo Glynn) are highly fallible, even misguided and foolish at times. And even the worst prisoners have sparks of humanity in them. These worst include the amazingly terrifying Simon Adebisi, the larger-than-life Nigerian criminal who controls the heroin trade in Oz. And J.K. Simmons deserves some kind of special award for his portrayal of Vern Schillinger, the leader of the neo-Nazi prisoners. He is the worst human being imaginable, but Simmons plays him with such style and elan that you have to grant the devil his due. As the recappers on "Television Without Pity" put it, if "Oz" were more well known, Schillinger would join Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates in the Fictional Villains Hall of Fame.
The battle for the souls of these men is best shown in the ordeal of Tobias Beecher, an upper-class lawyer who is convicted of a drunk-driving homicide and finds himself in the middle of this inferno. His horrible experiences in Oz reach a Job-like intensity. The second season sees the arrival of actor Christopher Meloni as the sociopathic Chris Keller. The three-way tango of betrayal between Keller, Beecher, and Schillinger is absolutely chilling. The storytelling of "Oz" is intricate, densely layered, and paced like a rocket taking off. If you miss five minutes of a single episode you may miss the fate of a character's entire life being sealed. There is a heightened, almost magic realism to much of what goes on. (In the land of Oz, it only takes a few weeks from a death sentenced being pronounced until its execution; and each episode is narrated by inmate Augustus Hill inside some kind of omni-aware, postmodern space.) This can be a little disconcerting at first, but the final impact is exhilarating. If you can take the intense (but never gratuitous) violence and the hair-raising prison sex, "Oz" is a wild ride from one of the best writers working in television.
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OZ:THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON - DVD Movie
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