J.K. Simmons Crime Drama ‘The Westies’ Is a Flat Take on New York’s Irish Mob: TV Review

The construction of the glass box where Hillary Clinton would eventually concede the 2016 election may not sound like the stuff of riveting television. And sure enough, it isn’t — at least in “The Westies,” the MGM+ drama about how the titular Irish gang worked to profit off the building of the Javits Center on the far edge of Manhattan. Despite the presence of veteran actors like J.K. Simmons and Titus Welliver as a local crime boss and the crooked cop he keeps on the payroll, “The Westies” is unable to deliver a distinctive take on a well-worn genre.

Oscar winner Simmons stars as Eamon Sweeney, a Hell’s Kitchen kingpin looking to leverage the Javits project into a gravy train for his associates, an interchangeable mob of young toughs with names like Sean and Connor. Sweeney’s vision requires making nice with the Italian Mafia that far outnumbers his dwindling crew — chief among them a skeptical and ascendant John Gotti (Hamish Allan-Headley), the most famous reminder that “The Westies” is (loosely) based on a real-life organization. (Would that “The Westies” were as transcendently awful as the 2018 biopic starring John Travolta as Gotti; instead, it’s merely dull.) But that plan relies on an impulsive group of violent thugs staying in line, and on junior deputies like Sweeney’s protegé Jimmy Roarke (Tom Brittney, saddled with distracting sideburns) trusting his judgment.

Creators Chris Brancato and Michael Panes, who previously collaborated on the network’s series “Godfather of Harlem,” could use the 1980s setting of “The Westies” to make more specific observations about the story’s time and place. The Javits Center, now the site of New York Comic Con and other gatherings, represents opportunity but also displacement in the twilight years of the Irish American population as a distinct ethnic bloc with its own physical enclaves. (Assimilation was already several generations underway by the time of the Reagan Administration.) But rather than strike a melancholy tone as in “The Sopranos” and Tony’s famous declaration that “I came in at the end,” “The Westies” simply feels dated in its focus on brawling Irishmen — like if the Jets of “West Side Story” simply kept at it for another 20 years and moved their battleground a few blocks south. The ascendance of Colombian cocaine and other hard drugs serves as one nod to changing times, but it’s a cursory one.

Nor does “The Westies” have the immersive production design of recent projects like HBO’s “The Deuce,” which recreated porn-era Times Square in all its seamy glory. (It doesn’t help that filming took place in Ontario, depriving “The Westies” of authentic local texture.) Most of the topicality comes from Jimmy’s girlfriend Bridget (Sarah Bolger), a fugitive IRA combatant who rejoins the struggle when her ex-comrade Brendan (Allen Leech) re-enters the picture. Yet viewers looking for a nuanced rendering of the Troubles would be far better served by watching 2024’s “Say Nothing” than this tangential subplot.

But “The Westies” suffers most from a severe lack of compelling protagonists. Sweeney is the kind of cold-blooded pragmatist who has no problem killing one of his own for disobeying orders, as he does in the opening scene. He’s certainly more convincing in his logic than Jimmy’s blind loyalty to loose cannons like Mickey Flanagan (Stanley Morgan), a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran who has no business handling a gun and does so with predictably disastrous results. Yet “The Westies” seems to lean more on Jimmy’s side of tribal loyalty, even when that tribe consists of killers and thieves there’s no real reason to prefer to those of other ethnicities.

Welliver’s Glenn Keenan, for example, isn’t just a corrupt cop reluctantly recruited by the FBI onto a special task force targeting the Gambino crime family. He’s also an alcoholic and deadbeat dad whose redemption isn’t an easy sell, even when Harry Bosch himself is doing the selling. By the umpteenth time Glenn’s teenage son Danny (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) begs him to just go away and stop belatedly trying to make things right, you can’t help nodding in agreement. The same goes for the entire ensemble: “The Westies” makes the audience indifferent at best to whether Sweeney’s group can successfully pocket millions through fraud and corruption, and actively antagonistic at worst. Meanwhile, the upbeat music that accompanies sporadic action sequences — mostly punching, though one involves an extremely goofy use of a rocket launcher — seems to suggest they’re meant to be endearing, or at least enjoyable.

Simmons’ booming voice and crinkly-eyed charm remain intact, even stuffed beneath a semi-period-appropriate newsboy cap. (Sweeney is a member of the old guard, after all; it’s not like he’d be wearing Armani suits.) But “The Westies” isn’t a particularly compelling translation of his appeal into the idiom of prestige TV, á la the short-lived sci-fi series “Counterpart,” or a savvy positioning of Simmons as an amoral older mentor to a young and hungry mentee, á la his Oscar-winning role in “Whiplash.” It’s just a crime show about an uninteresting group of criminals whose dying lifestyle there’s no reason to mourn.

The first two episodes of “The Westies” will premiere on MGM+ on July 12 at 9 p.m. ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Sundays.