"They're tough to swallow as siblings, even if their odd-sock pairing is part of the point: Jake (Law) is a hustler perpetually at the edge of his means, living in a rented penthouse with loaned art on the walls; Vince (Bateman) is a recovering-he prefers "former"-addict who's always running some kind of scam, digging himself into holes for the thrill of getting back out."
"they've based their entire lives on the principle that if you keep insisting you're something, most people will eventually just go along with it. When they're children, their father tries to sneak into their room at night and hide a parcel that turns out to contain what are obviously fake gold watches. In order to buy the boys' silence, their father hands each of them a knockoff, and when one asks him if they're real, he responds, "They're as real as you tell people they are.""
"That fake-it-till-you-make-it quality runs all though Black Rabbit, a sordid crime drama that only rarely achieves the kind of street-smart realism it's striving for. The brothers' last name is Friedken, presumably in homage to the director William Friedkin, whose urban thrillers- The French Connection, Cruising,and To Live and Die in L.A. among them-are suffused with such grit and muck you feel as if you have to wipe your shoes on the way out of the theater."
Two brothers from Coney Island, Jake and Vince Friedken, convert a childhood spent in neighborhood dives into a downtown restaurant that mixes high-end allure with dive-bar grit. Jake hustles on the edge of his means, living in a rented penthouse with loaned art, while Vince claims recovery yet keeps running scams for thrills. Their lives rest on insisting they are something until others accept it, illustrated by a childhood gift of fake gold watches and the lesson, "They're as real as you tell people they are." The series alternates street-smart realism with glossy artifice and uneven execution.
Read at Slate Magazine
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