Most Helpful Customer Reviews
60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Only Shows on TV Worth Watching!, February 7, 2003
This review is from: The Shield - The Complete First Season (DVD)
I love this show! I first got into it after reading some of the reviews posted here on these Season One dvds, so I thought I would give it a try and I purchased this complete season. I am truly glad that I did. I was hooked from the first episode to the last and I am now watching Season 2 on FX. What makes this show far better than all the other cop shows is that the production value is more in line with HBO or a movie than a cable television show. The acting is extremely good as are the scripts and dialogue. Even though Vic and his team are labeled "dirty" cops you can't help but root for them in the end. Michael Chiklis deserved his Golden Globe award for best actor, he takes on this role as if Vic Mackey was himself in a former life. I was also glad this show won the award for best drama series on TV. If you haven't seen the show yet and are unsure if you would like it, give it a try. It's a bit brutal and graphic, but by the time you finish the final episode, "Circles," you will be speechless, praying to catch repeats of Season 2.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best cop-drama series on TV bar none, February 15, 2006
This review is from: The Shield - The Complete First Season (DVD)
Shawn Ryan's raw, gritty and excellent The Shield on the FX Channel gives the well-worn cop-drama genre a lethal dose of adrenaline. The Shield is not your dad's old type of cop show. Where shows like Law and Order (and its many spin-offs) shows cops at their honorable best, Ryan's series shows that there are also tragically flawed men who wear police blues.
The Shield and its main character Vic Mackey (excellently played by Michael Chiklis) shows the dark, seedy underbelly of police work in a multi-ethnic district of Los Angeles. The show uses the real-life, scandal of the LAPD's RAMPART Division and runs with it. Instead of South Central, the show primarily uses the fictional LA district of Farmington as their base of operation. It is an area rife with gang activity, violence and drug-dealing. There's also the racial divisions between the Latino and black communities always in danger of bursting into open violence. Through all this lies Vic Mackey and his RAMPART-like Strike Team. Right from the pilot episode we see that Vic and his men are the true power in Farmington as they try to hold the peace between rival gangs and drug dealers. The Strike Team's intentions are noble, but they've also become so much a part of the problem that they do not see their amoral and corrupt tactics as anything bad. They see things in their district on the verge of anarchy and decided that the only way to save it is to use any means necessary.
The Shield pushes the boundaries of basic-cable shows and teeters right over the edge. All the episodes are well-written with stories and topics seemingly ripped from the headlines. The first season runs the gamut from police corruption, child pornography, rapes, murders, gang violence and cop-killing. These stories are not doen with the aim of titillation and gratuitous violence and sex just for its sake. Ryan and company create the stories to show that all the news of downtrodden neighborhoods and Wild West-styled policing are all too real and can be ignored. The ensemble cast surrounding Michael Chiklis also needs to be commended for keeping the gritty and realistic tone of the show from ever becoming over-the-top and sensationalist. Stand-out performances by Walter Goggins as Vic's reckless, racist partner in the team and that of CCH Pounder as the mirror opposite of Vic just shows that all the accolades heaped upon this show has been well-deserved and well-earned.
I can't say enough about The Shield to convey how excellent a show it is. The show doesn't pull its punches in dealing with its characters and its controversial topics. Instead Shawn Ryan and his actors infuses the show with realistic grit and uncompromised storytelling. A new series usually grows on me overtime as the early episodes tries to find the show's personality, but the pilot and its shocking cop-killing by a major character hooked me from the start and I have been a loyal devotee of Vic and his Strike Team. The Shield and Vic Mackey have become the Dirty Harry of the new millenium.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mercilessly unflinching L.A. police drama!!, December 18, 2002
This review is from: The Shield - The Complete First Season (DVD)
Thank God for cable TV! "The Shield" is the most intense new cop series in a decade. The action centers around an proto-experimental police precinct in South Central L.A. The action is violent and intense and pulls no punches. Series lead Michael Chiklis stars as Vic Mackey, leader of an elite squad within the precinct. Mackey is corrupt, amoral, but a great and effective cop. Even when you want to hate him you can't help but root for him. The precinct house's new Lieutenant makes no secret about wanting to bust Mackey as part of his political aspirations, but Mackey isn't going down without a fight. And he certainly has the fight in him. The final scene in the first episode set the tone for what kind of cop Mackey can be. But throughout the whole first season viewers are treated to a level of grittiness and action rarely seen on television. Always intense! One particularly satisfying story arc in the first season centers around one of the precinct's new detectives trying to catch what he thinks might be a serial killer. He eventually gets his man, and some unexpected respect from his fellow officers, but the psychological price he pays is what will resonate long after the case file is closed. And "The Shield"'s visual style (namely the art direction and use of color) is unlike any other cop show you've seen before. That sounds kind of odd if you haven't already seen the show, but it gives the show a distinctive look to go with its already distinctive sound and feel. Watching this show gives me the same charge I got from watching the first season of "N.Y.P.D. Blue" -- the David Caruso season.
That whole first season is also available from Fox TV on DVD in early 2003. Too bad the "...Blue" box set won't also contain the first four episodes from Season 2, the episodes that wrapped up David Caruso's character story line through his exit from the show. **** Easy instructions for watching "The Shield - Season One" on DVD:
Point, click, buy, watch, enjoy, pick jaw up off floor.
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