Reviews & Ratings for
"Magic City" More at IMDbPro »

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29 out of 41 people found the following review useful:
Good Watch. Promising Future., 1 April 2012

Author: Ata Sergey Nowak from Germany

After hearing that there was going to be a show about the 1960s Miami this TV Series caught my attention. Myself as a Retro fan was pretty happy that shows like these are getting more common after Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire which were and still are amazing series.

First off its not possible to rate a whole TV Series off the first Episode so this will be about the first episode and how it is in my Opinion.

Magic City looks and feels authentic in many ways. The Quality of the set is really great some improvements could be made here and there but overall it looks fine. The story looks promising with hopefully a lot of future depth in it. I hope what i saw in the first Episode is the tip of the Iceberg. Another plus is that the music of the show is truly great and was picked carefully so it fitted to most of the parts. The important thing is to keep the music as a feature and not to overuse it.

Considering that the actors here are not that well known they are acting in a great manner that makes them look like professionals at times. So a big bravo to the Cast. One of the other points i liked is that the series took good care about the date it was set in showing the affects of real occurrences on the story minorly.

The Effects sometimes did look a bit too weak compared to the rest of the show. These can be improved of course but this doesn't change the fact that it looked a bit off and unrealistic. There were some scenes where the camera angles and the look of a room in a scene wasn't that well done compared to the other great rooms or environments they had showed beforehand.

So Overall. A good watch with a few mistakes here and there on the first episode. Hoping to see the true potential of the storyline and depth out of the following episodes.

If you didn't watch it check it out and see for yourself

8/10

15 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Has great potential...we'll see, 8 April 2012

Author: ziploked from United States

This show caught my attention, and held it from start to finish. It moves at a slow, but steady pace, as if mimicking the slightly slower speed people adjust to when in the tropics. The pace is perfect though, as nothing is rushed, and the story seems to move at an appropriate speed without bogging itself down.

The acting is good, the characters quickly defined with a touch of slight touch of cliché personalities, but I think it helps to make the story move along by quickly separating the good from the bad and the mysterious.

Great period shots of cars, fashion, and the era of smoking abound, giving those of us old enough to remember a nostalgic look at a period that was wonderful, tumultuous, and tragic all at once. This show has the right cast, and it's future depends solely on where it's writers take it. Definitely worth a watch.

11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
It has a lot of potential to be fantastic, 24 April 2012

Author: crystalyno24 from United States

I really enjoyed this show. The first episode was kind of boring, and I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to change the channel. As it went deeper into the story line, boring it was NOT! I started to get the feel of the characters -- and I really enjoyed it. Even my boyfriend (who hardly ever "likes" any show or movie) liked the show. So, what I will say to you is .. give it a try!! It was a lot better than I expected. There is a lot of nude scenes, which I'm okay with.. but I wouldn't watch it as a family.

I already have a lot of questions that I can not wait to get the answers to. I just hope the writers/producers do not ruin it, which there are always ways to do. Keep up the good work.. you found a fan in me!! I will be watching each and every Friday night 'till season end!

11 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
The Mob Rises, 14 May 2012

Author: scouser73-1 from United Kingdom

I've now watched the first two episodes of this and I am hooked, it's got everything right; the casting, the costumes & the feel.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the lead, what a fantastic choice of actor, we don't see enough of his talents.

This is when the Mafia where in their element, you really couldn't ask for a better Television programme, I've also heard that a second series is to be produced which is excellent.

I would say it's akin to The Soprano's albeit in 50's/60's styling, this is shaping up to be THE thing to watch.

Magic City=Magic Television.

6 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Class Act, 29 May 2012

Author: Justin Wright from Dubai

Well I feel this show has everything good TV should bring to the screen.

The cast is excellent and acting is all on form all round. The sets and wardrobes are top notch and the attention to detail is as good as any period show on TV at the moment.

Its great to see the likes of Kelly Lynch in such a good role again at last.

Danny Huston delivers a hauntingly brilliant villain and Jef Morgan is possibly at his career best yet.

As for the women in the show, well need I say anything...

I'm happily addicted to the show and lets hope this one stays around for some time

7 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Magic City is like heroin., 23 May 2012

Author: Mike Szymanski from United States

Magic City is as addicting as any TV show can possibly get. If you think it's going to be the same old crime drama, or a Miami Beach version of the Soprano's, you may be right...but only about the latter. And only because this show is just as good.

Magic City's characters are so good and so well acted, you find yourself rooting for everyone in the show. You feel connected to each one. Even the Butcher, Ben Diamond. You may not 'root' for The Butcher, but in his almighty evilness lies an extremely flawed human being. You don't even need to know his back story, you just know the man has issues.

I live in Fort Lauderdale and travel to Miami Beach often. Magic City accurately depicts what Mimai Beach looks like minus 54 years. The shows creative team are true to their 1950's early 60's version of Miami. No anachronisms to bust the mood. This as authentic as they get.

To the un-seen viewers: Take a few hours on the couch and relax. Watch a few episodes in a row, and you will go back in time. If you are having any personal difficulties in life; this is the heroin that will allow you a few hours respite. You will become a fly on the wall at the Miramar Hotel in Miami Beach in 1959. I doubt you will think of anything other than whats happening on the screen. You will however, want more.

This is five star stuff.

Mike I am just a normal no one that loves a good series. You will too.

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Very Entertaining, 21 May 2012

Author: drlally-376-560165 from United States

I have now watched all 7 episodes of this new series. My initial reaction to the first episode was that it was good but not compelling. This proved to be deceptive. By the end of the 2nd episode I was hooked. The shows strength is the juxtaposition of the control that Ike Evans, the shows clever lead character, exerts over himself while trying to "do good" by others, against the always simmering and ready to boil passion of the truly bad guy "Ben Diamond". The shows other characters are properly developed to provide fodder for the main characters' growth, confrontation and destruction. The setting in 1959 Miami is great and all the necessary detail to buildings, cars and props was made. I give the show a solid "9" but not quite a ten because it does for very short periods in most episodes come up a little short in a hard to describe way. Perhaps the clichés are a little to frequent, with all of the characters being a little too easily pigeonholed. But I digress, I enthusiastically recommend the show to and adult audience as very entertaining. Since the 2nd episode I have always made sure that I am in front of the TV at 10 PM Friday nights to see the next installment. Bravo to the show!!!

3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
A disappointment to someone who lived in that world, 6 April 2013

Author: marcosgoodman from Argentina

That era of Miami Beach is a fantastic treasure trove of visuals and stories of all kinds of incredible characters. I grew up in it a few years closer to those years than Mitch Glazer, so maybe I just remember it better. Hey, he got the series made, whereas I've just had this stuff in my head for 50 years, so I'll definitely give him some credit for portraying the atmosphere. Unfortunately though, he's just objectively inaccurate on a number of points where he really didn't need to be. Those are probably things that only a nitpicker like me would care about, but, to me and other Miami Beach people of the era, those things might matter. The worst part, though, is just that the characters and the story are boring, just the opposite of the reality.

So, I watched episodes 1 & 2 and then chucked it after the beginning of episode 3 which showed the girls at the 1959 beauty pageant dancing The Twist. Unfortunately, no one danced The Twist until mid-1960 when Hank Ballard's original version came out, and then it really became big with the Chubby Checker #1 version later in 1960. I spent a whole lot of time working on picking up tourist girls in teen dances in those hotels, and I screwed up my back twisting too much at one hotel bar mitzvah and had to miss a day of school. Also, my father had the first rock and roll club on The Beach, so maybe I'm a bit sensitive about the music stuff.

That's another thing- they talk about "Miami" in Magic City. Sorry, but people said "Miami Beach", not Miami. I'm serious, because Miami was this place across the water somewhere in the South of the US. It was another universe that people only visited for sports events. Miami Beach was its own world, and New York was really the next stop in those years before freeway exits. No big thing, but it just irked me, as did a bunch of things in the earlier episodes.

In episode 1, the restaurant in the hotel can't function pre-New Years 1958-59 because all of the Cuban kitchen staff are preoccupied with the events in Havana. Sorry, but the staff would definitely have been black, not Cuban, as hardly any Cubans had come across yet. I remember in 1958 when the first Cuban came into our school wearing a white suit, and I became his first friend. I used to go over to his house, one of the last houses still on the beach, and they had all kinds of weapons and adults arguing in Spanish. Although no one will ever know, his father, Eladio del Valle, was most likely key in the Kennedy assassination. He was found in his car with a bullet in his head on the same day as David Ferrie was found dead in New Orleans.

The owner's son, Stevie, has a build that only comes from weight-room workouts, and weight rooms didn't exist then. The only gyms then were places that boxers worked out, like the 5th Street Gym where I'd go to watch Cassius Clay. When my father took me to the spa at the Fontainebleau, there was no place to work out. The guys got a rubdown while getting their nails done with clear polish. The closest thing to exercise was walking into the steam room. No one in those pre-steroid, pre-workout days, except for a few very odd muscle guys, had developed lats or triceps. Even pro football players didn't use weights, as they thought that it would make you "musclebound".

The owner's wife talks about "stress". Not a concept yet. The Eames Management chairs in his office weren't commercially available yet. More importantly, Frank Sinatra opened cold, no warm-up act or big build-up! I remember sneaking into the Boom Boom Room to see Sinatra, and it just wasn't like that. Actually, when someone asks me where I grew up, I still often say, "The Boom Boom Room".

In episode 2, the guy orders "extra-lean corned beef"!! Heresy! Now, maybe Glazer was just intending that to be some kind of joke, as the guy ordering wasn't Jewish? However, I don't think that anyone ordered extra-lean anything in those days, and especially not corned beef. Then they make a big thing about the daughter's bas mitzvah, and she says, "Everybody I know has her bas mitzvah!" Absolutely wrong. Not in 1959. I doubt if one Jewish girl in a hundred had a bas mitzvah. Then, grandpa tells the daughter that he'll take her on the rides at Fun Fair. Sorry, no rides at Fun Fair other than the mechanical horsie for 3-year-olds.

A somewhat less nitpicky thing is that the big mob guys didn't live in big mansions! Meyer Lansky and "Trigger Mike" Copolla, the Italian boss at the time, both lived in modest homes without gates. As I remember, Copolla's did have bullet-proof glass in the living room that faced the street right across from our junior high school, but it was just a normal 50's house. Miami Beach definitely had big fancy houses and cars, but the mob guys kept a low profile, although everyone knew who they were. My "fraternity", Knights, had the sons of the of some of those mob guys. The dads were nice enough to me, though they did things worse than anything shown in Magic City. My friends died early.

Well, enough of my kvetching for now. Maybe I will watch the rest of the season, just because it's playing in my head whether I watch it or not.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
No martial arts!!Just art...., 5 May 2012

Author: meser84 from Romania

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Set in 1950's Miami, Florida, Magic City tells the story of Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the owner of Miami's most glamorous hotel, the Miramar Playa. Evans is forced to make an ill-fated deal with Miami mob boss Ben Diamond (Danny Huston) to ensure the success of his glitzy establishment.

Through the early episodes, nothing really happens that you couldn't see coming. Still, the setting is so seductive, the period details so vivid and the acting so stellar.The sordid ugliness that festers inside Magic City's voluptuously beautiful wrappings makes irresistible television.

If you believe movies are art, then "Magic city" is a 'must"

5 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Magic City entertains with a historical slant, 5 April 2012

Author: ercracingfuel from United States

I loved the period aura, the clothes, the cars, the projection of opulence with a hint of malevolence. All that, I'm sure was targeted by the writers and producers of the show. I congratulate them on their creation and its entertainment quotient. They succeeded on those obvious levels.

That said, and because I'm fascinated by the history of this period and that rotation of the earth that was the Cuban Revolution, as well as the history of Florida in general, I'm hoping that, going forward, the show concentrates a bit more on the actual history of the epoch weaving into the plot line those elements of change which impacted our country politically and culturally. If the creators and producers of the show do that, this show has the potential for real societal relevance. I have the feeling that historical relevance mixed with period accuracy in terms of setting, costumes, props, and dialog have the ability to make this show stand out as significant. At the end of the day, if it's only entertaining there will be an opportunity cost to be paid in sad coinage. In my opinion, that would be too bad.

I've watched the 1st three "teaser" episodes and liked them very much. Now I'm hoping this show can step into the heavyweight division. I think it is quite possible that it could.

Rick G. - California

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