Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Episodes: 8
Duration: 49 min (per episode)
Banshee: Season 4 (DVD) – Series Review
Nearly half a year ago we took a look at Season 3 of Banshee, which proved to have a lot going on all squeezed within the course of ten episodes. This time, the fourth and last season will bombard you once more with gritty scenes, terrible truths and a final glance in the life of ‘Lucas Hood’, all within eight episodes. Last season ended with the million dollar heist on the local corrupt military facility, and while this showed the ingenuity of the group, without the presence of Hood, it was clear things weren’t going to end up like they originally intended. Job was abducted and Gordon Hopewell was lethally wounded, which now takes us to the aftermath of these events.
After Job’s (Hoon Lee) disappearance and the fact that Hood (Antony Starr), Carrie (Ivana Milicevic) and Sugar (Frankie Faison) can’t seem to track him down, Hood has vanished to live a secluded life, away from everyone. Nonetheless, he will be escorted back to the public, as he turns up to be a possible suspect in a recent murder case, namely Rebecca Bowman’s (Lili Simmons) murder, Kai Proctor’s (Ulrich Thomsen) niece. Even though Hood is not interested in doing police work anymore, he vows to find Rebecca’s killer and bring him to justice, a.k.a. six feet under. Even though Brock (Matt Servitto) doesn’t really want Hood around, he knows better than to interfere too much in this personal vendetta, yet he wishes to crack the case himself.
Meanwhile, Kurt Bunker (Tom Pelphrey) is getting used to his law enforcement job in Banshee, but he still has enough going on in his life, that can’t always be dealt with from the right side of the law. His Neo-Nazi past still haunts him, as the Aryan Brotherhood has it out for him, but he wishes to bring portions of the brotherhood down, specifically his brother Calvin Bunker (Chris Coy). Unbeknownst of what is going on, Calvin thinks he is ready to grab hold of power of one of the Brotherhood’s branches, while returning home to his loving family on a daily basis, but it seems that his wife and Kurt are having an affair. All of this makes Kurt’s path to justice harder, as he has to limit the collateral damage to a minimum.
Another part of the story unfolds as Carrie is secretly playing vigilante, hoping to rid the city of evil as well, but this is probably due to the loss of her husband and the fact that her children got taken away after the event at the military base. Nonetheless, it seems she is walking a path of self-destruction.
Considering everything has to be rounded up within the course of eight episodes, the flow is rather fast, but not too fast to process everything that is going on. Overall there’s a healthy balance of suspense, action, information and resolution of certain past and current events. Overall most things will get proper closure within this series, except some things that have to do with the characters themselves. If these small snippets keep you up at night, you’ll still find solace in the fact that the actual main arc will get a proper finish.
Acting performances remain as qualitative as they were during the previous seasons, but during these eight episodes Tom Pelphrey receives a more prominent role in the spotlights, and he does his job gracefully. We kind of regret not being able to get a glance of his character during the earlier seasons, or perhaps a bit more of his background, but he fills up the gaps quite nicely by playing one of the lead actors in this final arc. As always, no character feels like a simple ‘extra’, even those who only get very limited screen time.
Just like with the previous box, the DVD set of season 4 comes with a hefty amount of extras that will certainly keep you occupied for some time. While the ‘zoomed in’ sections, where they take a closer look at certain scenes and fighting choreography, prove to be an entertaining sidetrack from traditional commentaries or making of sequences, it’s probably the ‘origins’ series that steals the show. During these short episodes we’ll get to see events that happened in the past, that are not incorporated within the actual episodes (safe for some) giving you some extra information to work with, or shed another light on certain characters. Last but not least, the retrospectives allow you to hear the thoughts of the cast members about Job’s outfits and their favorite fight scenes.
Conclusion
Banshee: Season 4 follows the same qualitative story building and character development as in the previous seasons, assuring fans of the previous seasons to not be disappointed. Intensive fights, great acting and a fair amount of special features will add a lot of value to your Banshee experience. Even though saying our goodbyes to this series proved to be hard, especially with some open topics still unresolved, we can’t disagree with the creators who pretty much stated that a finished story doesn’t need to go on longer than it is intended. “Going out with an emotional bang” is probably the best way to describe this last season of Banshee. Totally worth the watch.
No Comments