(This review may contain spoilers).
Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie are both actors I’m quite familiar with, one through a variety of different pop culture (and who was responsible for the very first post on my blog) and one because of…well, House. So when I walked past this DVD in the shop, I kept getting drawn back to it when I saw their faces. Eventually, I purchased it.
The first episode more or less drew me right into the action straight away, but I felt that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, as I didn’t really care too much about the main characters at first. Pine was a character who grew on me, but I was somewhat disappointed, as I was expecting a darker, grittier descent into him becoming a criminal. It wasn’t until towards the end that I really saw the violence the character was capable of. However, by then, I was fully on board with what he was trying to do and I kept worrying about the actions he was taking.
For a miniseries, I didn’t think the secondary characters were developed as well as they could have been. While I eventually got to know Angela’s history with Roper, it took a while to show the amount of depth to her. There was a lot of potential between her and Joel, but I didn’t really get a clear idea of their history. And there was a lot of intrigue going on, but there were so many characters hiding things, I was left wrong-footed for a lot of the series.
I had some very mixed feelings about Roper. I didn’t feel like there was anything to him other than his selling the guns. Yes, he had a relationship with Jed; and he had his son. But I felt both of those relationships did little to humanise him. Plus, he didn’t seem to have a lot of loyalty to those he’d spent so long working with. It didn’t feel that difficult for Pine to drive a wedge between them and therefore, I felt him getting ‘in’ with Roper lacked a certain kind of satisfaction.
I think the series was very well-acted and made and I especially liked Angela’s character by the end of the series. It did have a satisfying ending, but I would have liked less focus on the romance and more on the downward spiral and compromised morals of Pine’s character.
Ink of Blood 