The Wire Odyssey (2007) (TV)

Release Date:

20 December 2007 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary

Cast

Gbenga Akinnagbe	...	Himself
Reg E. Cathey	...	Himself
Robert F. Chew	...	Himself
Chris Collins	...	Himself
Jermaine Crawford	...	Himself
John Doman	...	Himself
Jami Floyd	...	Herself
Nelson George	...	Himself
Aidan Gillen	...	Himself
Seth Gilliam	...	Himself
Larry Gilliard Jr.	...	Himself
Anwan Glover	...	Himself
Jamie Hector	...	Himself
Clark Johnson	...	Himself
Joe Klein	...	Himself
Michael Kostroff	...	Himself
Nina Kostroff-Noble	...	Herself (as Nina K. Noble)
Domenick Lombardozzi	...	Himself
Deirdre Lovejoy	...	Herself
Steve Luxenberg	...	Himself
Method Man	...	Himself
Thomas McCarthy	...	Himself (as Tom McCarthy)
Michelle Paress	...	Herself
Felicia Pearson	...	Herself
Clarke Peters	...	Himself
Wendell Pierce	...	Himself
Lance Reddick	...	Himself
Corey Parker Robinson	...	Himself
Andre Royo	...	Himself
Alan Sepinwall	...	Himself
David Simon	...	Himself
Sonja Sohn	...	Herself
Karen L. Thorson	...	Herself
Jacob Weisberg	...	Himself
Dominic West	...	Himself
Isiah Whitlock Jr.	...	Himself
Tristan Wilds	...	Himself
Delaney Williams	...	Himself
Melvin Williams	...	Himself
Michael K. Williams	...	Himself (as Michael Kenneth Williams)
William F. Zorzi	...	Himself (as Bill Zorzi)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Home Box Office (HBO)

Movie Connections:

Features "The Wire" (2002)

Enjoyable but the subject deserves more time, patience and contributions

Having just watched the Last Word documentary I came to Odyssey thinking that it would be more of the same – plenty of substance but partially masked by a frantic style and delivery that does detract from it and unfortunately I was partially right. The area I was wrong about was in regards how much it detracts. At the start the hyper style did grate but then later we got to contributions that almost suited this approach. What actually helped covered the problems in delivery though was just how interesting the film was. OK so we open on a very fast run through the content of seasons one through five which offered little but then we have more reflections, opinions and memories from the cast and crew – the vast majority of which are interesting and honest.

I liked the gags about the Emmys (West counters the idea that the show is well written because, if it were, there would have been Emmys), the parts people originally auditioned for, the favourite scenes, favourite characters etc. These are all good and ultimately what we have is a pretty good little film for fans. However I can't judge it on that because what the film claims to be doing is reviewing the odyssey of The Wire and to try and do this in thirty minutes is not only a big ask but also a bit of a disservice. OK so in terms of running time the frantic editing helps but I would rather have had a significantly longer film where the contributions are not edited right down to the end of the last word, like we're watching an episode of 24 or something. I would also have liked more contributions from the cast – Elba, Harris, the entire docks cast of season 2 are absent with only Gilliard really representing the former cast members. It would have been a lot better if they had taken their time, covered the same ground but given more time to each contribution and also gotten more of the main actors from previous seasons involved.

Still a good documentary for fans and gets better as it goes but it is hard to shake the feeling that The Wire deserves better than this, as enjoyable as it is.