Black Rabbit

The Cost of Doing Business

Whenever I walk into a fancy restaurant, I find myself wondering what kind of panic is unfolding behind the kitchen doors. *Black Rabbit*, the Netflix miniseries from creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, answers with a gun, a robbery, and a six-figure gambling debt. Underneath all the polished surfaces, it’s really about the particular exhaustion of trying to outrun your own bloodline.

Jake Friedkin (Jude Law) is gliding through the opening night of his sleek Lower East Side club, Black Rabbit, while million-dollar jewels sit out on display like an invitation for trouble. Trouble arrives right on schedule when masked men storm the place. Then the show pulls its favorite streaming trick and jumps back a month. I’ve never loved that move. If the present is strong, you shouldn’t need a flashing sign that says disaster is coming. Still, the real catastrophe here isn’t the robbery anyway. It’s Vince, Jake’s brother, showing up at the door.



Jason Bateman plays Vince, and he looks like hell in the best possible way. Bateman has spent years refining that put-upon, trying-to-hold-it-together energy—even on *Ozark*, he was basically the guy filing paperwork while the room caught fire. Here, he’s the fire. Vince stumbles back into Jake’s carefully arranged life with a scraggly beard, bad nerves, and the unmistakable look of a man who sold something that was not his to sell. He’s a five-time loser carrying $144,000 in debt to a local mobster, played with eerie, grounded menace by Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur. Kotsur barely has to push. He just occupies the room and lets everyone else tense up around him.



Baylin and Susman are clearly trying to build a stress machine, and for a while they manage it. The Playlist's review nailed the appeal, calling the series "an anxious, bruising portrait of loyalty that saves and destroys in equal measure." That sounds exactly right. The camera creeps inward during the brothers’ arguments, and it loves the empty dark in Jake’s absurdly underlit apartment. Law is fun to watch here, even if the American accent slips now and then. The better performance is physical. He carries himself like someone bracing for impact even when nobody is touching him. Every time Vince opens his mouth, you can watch Jake’s carefully pressed self-control split right down the middle. Their scenes don’t feel like gangland posturing so much as two brothers still litigating some childhood slight nobody ever got over.



Then the show starts to swell past its natural size. Eight episodes, nearly an hour each, is a lot to ask from material this tight and nasty. Side plots keep drifting in. Secondary characters pop up just to create fresh complications. The central pain of the thing gets diluted a little every time the story takes another detour.

And yet I kept watching. Even when the script starts wandering, Law and Bateman keep the center of gravity intact just by circling each other. They make brotherhood look like a trap you recognize perfectly and walk into anyway, hoping maybe this time the door won’t shut.