J.K. Simmons commands attention in any role he undertakes, capable of making even the most mundane script captivating. His latest venture is the MGM+ series The Westies, where he embodies a ruthless leader of an Irish-American crime syndicate set in the gritty backdrop of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen during the early 1980s.
THE WESTIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Scene: A tense standoff unfolds in a dimly lit warehouse, where a young man brandishes a gun towards someone with all the appearances of a mafia figure.
The Gist: The young man with the firearm is Davey O’Brien, played by Dan Reilly, a foot soldier for the Westies, an Irish crime syndicate holding sway in Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s west side. Leading this organization is Eamon Sweeney, portrayed by J.K. Simmons, who finds his gang’s influence waning under pressure from the Italian mob, particularly the notorious Gambino crime family. The hostage, Vincent Siccaro, played by Michael Rispoli, is a capo within this powerful Italian crime family.
Sweeney, alongside his trusted right-hand man Jimmy Roarke, portrayed by Tom Brittney, enters the warehouse to prevent Davey from making a grave mistake that could ignite a war between mob factions. Sweeney and Roarke must remind Davey that their operations have changed, now aligning with the Italians rather than antagonizing them with small-time kidnappings. However, before releasing Siccaro, Sweeney shockingly decides to eliminate Davey, explaining to a furious Jimmy that Davey’s unpredictability posed a serious risk to their organization.
Though Sweeney resents bowing down to the Italians, the stakes are substantial. With the Javits Center under construction on the Westies’ home ground, collaborating with the Gambino family provides access to lucrative racketeering opportunities. Without this alliance, the Westies face exclusion from these high-stakes profits.
When Sweeney is summoned to meet with fast-rising Gambino underboss John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headly), he’s told that the Westies have to “silence” a union leader popular in the Irish community. At the same time, Jimmy’s friend Mickey Flanagan (Stanley Morgan) is being released from Bellvue, and he insists he’s well enough to work for Sweeney again. Jimmy’s girlfriend, Bridget Walsh (Sarah Bolger), is asked by a former IRA colleague (and ex), Brendan Cahill (Allen Leech), to “babysit” a rocket launcher he’s smuggled into New York for a big plan he’s looking to execute.
In the meantime, a beat cop named Glenn Keenan (Titus Welliver), is recruited by FBI Special Agent In Charge Birdie Polk (Jessica Frances Dukes) to join their task force to bring down the Gambinos. The plan is for him to get info from the Westies, given his background. What Polk doesn’t know is that Keenan grew up with Sweeney and takes payments from the Westies to look the other way; Sweeney encourages Keenan to join the task force and report back to him. But Keenan’s biggest concern is that his estranged son Danny (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) doesn’t get involved with the Westies.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Westies, created by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, reminds us of other crime dramas about the Irish-American mob, like Brotherhood or The Black Donnellys.
Our Take: Like the aforementioned shows about the Irish-American mob, The Westies gives viewers a fair amount of Irish tropes, like people sitting around a pub drinking Guinness, needle drops from the Dropkick Murphys, and thugs in leather jackets and newsboy caps. What The Westies has that many of those other shows didn’t is J.K. Simmons and, to a lesser extent, Titus Welliver.
Simmons is excellent here as Eamon Sweeney. Sweeney is ruthless as the Westies’ leader, to the point where he has no compunction with shooting a loyal footsoldier in the head to keep him from screwing things up for them, and then show up to his funeral and actually seem regretful that he had to do it. When he’s being ordered around by Gotti, you can see in Simmons’ face that he hates being pushed around by the Italians, but he also is keeping his eyes on the prize, which is the huge payday associated with the Javits Center grift.
Welliver’s character, Glenn Keenan, seems to be a typical crooked veteran cop who has been on the job for decades and is counting the days to retirement while taking his kickbacks from Sweeney. But there is certainly more to his story, and the story of his and Sweeney’s frenemyship, just from what we can see in the once scene that Simmons and Welliver share in the first episode. They’re contemporaries who are from the same neighborhood and ran in the same circles, but one became a Westie and the other became a cop, albeit a corrupt one.
Their story is the one we find intriguing in the early going. The mob hierarchy between the Italians and the Irish brings a somewhat novel dynamic to this 1980s organized crime story, but it’s not novel enough to be interesting. Jimmy’s struggles to keep his unhinged friend Mickey from getting himself and others killed and Bridget’s struggle to keep her IRA past in check have the potential to be good stories, but they also feel a bit generic, despite good performances.
Performance Worth Watching: We mentioned Simmons and Welliver, so we’ll talk about Sarah Bolger, who has a potentially meaty role as Bridget, who is going to be pulled back into her IRA past by Brendan.
Sex And Skin: Some blurry toplessness in one scene, but that’s about it.
Parting Shot: After Sweeney orders Jimmy to shoot Mickey, Jimmy shoots someone else instead, and Sweeney says, “Do you know the fuckin’ troubles you just caused us?” Jimmy’s reply: “We’ve always got troubles.”
Sleeper Star: Jessica Frances Dukes plays Agent Birdie Polk as appropriately tough, weary and snarky, like when she tells Keenan that she’s the Special Agent In Charge, she then follows it up with, “I know, right? They even gave me a nameplate.”
Most Pilot-y Line: The way that Jimmy and Mickey “silence” the union leader doesn’t seem to have any repercussions, given what it seemed like everyone understood Gotti’s instructions to Sweeney were.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Westies is a servicable crime drama thanks to the performances of Simmons and Welliver and the potential for their stories to yield interesting drama. The rest of the show is OK, but nothing that will stick in our minds after we watch the series.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.