Critic Reviews

[A] terrific dynastic saga, a darker-than-dark "Giant" [1956 film directed by George Stevens]. [3-16 Apr 2017, p.19]

The Son is mostly about a son with two fathers, one white, the other Comanche. He absorbs the soul, spirit and perspective of the latter. It’s a particularly interesting idea and character based on a celebrated book. Here’s hoping the miniseries lives up to the promise. Saturday’s opener suggests that it should.

It’s a thoroughly decent exploration of the contest between ethics and burgeoning power, as well as a war of wills between a messed-up, morally “flexible” patriarch and his progeny.

It’s not a program that can be easily enjoyed through casual viewing and appreciation for the genre, but rather, it begs itself to be taken seriously, much in the same way its own book sparked stressful conversations through its tale of a family dynasty in the making. For that reason, The Son might not be for everyone.

[Pierce Brosnan's] awkward drawl is one of the most jarring mood-killers in The Son, and those twinkly eyes are often more playful than dangerous. Even though the journey may be a bit bumpy, The Son still offers an easy ride into the Old West.

The Son will rise--if it can live up to its ambitions, if it can more convincingly explain how young Eli on the frontier became old Eli at the dawn of civilization, and if it can be even half as wild as the West it wants to explore.

Without a great authoritative figure to lift the entire piece to a mythic level, The Son may have been better off in book form--where readers can imagine the Texas described in its pages.

Sometimes, I wished The Son breathed more and didn’t have so many scenes that play out something like “Here’s my story and what I plan to do,” but one has to admire the ambition of the piece, and at least two stand-out performances.

The Son is a handsomely shot, well-acted, and respectable piece of work. But it also isn’t surprising or deeply insightful enough about its characters to truly stand out in the current over-capacity venue that is television in 2017.

The Son rises and sets on Brosnan’s work. Everything else is distraction.