‘Furious’ series review: Emmy Rossum powers this tale of feminine rage

What a thrilling ride Furious turned out to be! While the premise of a driven FBI agent hunting down a serial killer might seem familiar, Elizabeth Meriwether has dissected the story to show a cross-section of the good, bad and ugly aspects of society.

Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) is a former NYPD homicide detective who has joined the FBI and is banished to answer the tip line. On the other side of town, it is Halloween and a young woman, Catherine (Lola Petticrew) offers candy to a child dressed as Dracula, while inside, a man struggles to find his feet as he crawls on the floor.

Alice finds a connection between the deaths of wealthy men from fentanyl overdoses and a young woman who seems to know how to enter and exit a building without being captured on camera.

As Alice digs deeper, despite facing strenuous objections from her colleagues, including Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Ed George (Danny McCarthy), she uncovers a conspiracy.

There is a dead teenager, a buried investigation, rich and powerful men, a sex trafficking ring, vicious men who control young girls with a mixture of threats, drugs and violence, teenage pregnancies and videos of men doing unspeakable things to young girls.

Alice has her own crosses to bear with an abusive boyfriend in the NYPD, Marshall Connelly (Jake Lacy), who was the reason she quit the police as no one was willing to believe her claims about him. She engages in risky sexual behaviour and has cut off ties with her family who abandoned her.

With help from Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine, excellent), the head of the FBI’s sex crimes unit, Alice slowly uncovers the years of slime obscuring a teenager’s death in 2012 and the subsequent cover-up.

While the world of Furious is chockablock with the lowest of the low, and vile blots of humanity, there are decent people as well. There is Danny (Scoot McNairy) Alice’s friend and partner on the police force who waits outside Alice’s bathroom door while she has a bath. Alice is triggered by baths as Marshall would drag her out of the bath and beat her senseless. Alden (Steve Way), Catherine’s home-care client, is genuinely fond of her and tries to help her.

A still from ‘Furious’
| Photo Credit:
JioHotstar

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There is something elementally disgusting about the lengths Emma (Hope Davis), daughter of the dying billionaire, Jay Easton (Peter McRobbie), would go, to gain her father’s approval.

When she says she is a victim too, it rings true. Power does not protect everyone while the same tools are used by the generationally privileged to treat human beings as disposable objects.

Furious brings to mind Stieg Larsson’s millennium books and Lisbeth Salander’s uncompromising search for justice against those who harmed her. Rossum is the heart of Furious. At once formidable, fragile and tenacious, she brings Alice vividly to life. Alice’s decision in the finale was contrary to all she believed through the series and was a blemish in the otherwise perfect show.

The 1987 movie, Black Widow (nothing to do with the MCU) starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell, is the inspiration behind Furious. It features a conventional hunt for a serial killer. Nearly 40 years later, Furious takes the bare bones of that story and crafts a disturbing, thought-provoking series that feels very much of its time, much as Black Widow did.  

And with Furious renewed for a second season we can look forward to another exploration of society’s ills in the veins of Agent Alice’s new case.

Furious streams on JioHotstar