Tulsa King is a 2022 crime drama series created by Taylor Sheridan, starring Sylvester Stallone
in the lead role. Sheridan is hot property at the moment, building his hugely popular Yellowstone
universe. I haven’t seen any of those shows, and nor was I too interested in Tulsa King in spite
of following the project for quite a while. It was only when I heard people saying it was
surprisingly decent that I decided to take a break from the show I’m currently watching, voted for by
my subscribers, and took at look at Tulsa King. Sylvester Stallone has a very interesting history
with the mob film genre. Coming from a fan’s perspective, you’d think he’d have already
dabbled in the genre, but he always seems to have danced around gangster movies rather than
actually been in one and played a mobster. It looked very likely that he was going to be in
one of The Godfather films at one point, which didn’t happen, and then there was that Greg Scarpa
biopic that was talked about but seems to have disappeared into the abyss. Sure he played a cop
in Cop Town and a hardman in Get Carter, he played a small role in an Al Capone biopic in the 70s,
and there’s the comedy Oscar where he played a gangster trying to go straight, but really there
is no project I can think of where he plays a proper mobster in a meaty serious role. Maybe
it’s got something to do with his insistence in the past of wanting to play the hero, and its very
difficult to make a gangster look like a hero. That day has come however it seems, with Stallone
playing New York capo Dwight Manfredi, recently released from prison after doing 25 years not
a peep. Immediately after being released he is sent by his family to Tulsa in Oklahoma,
essentially being flogged off, exiled even, and there he builds a criminal empire of his
own with a group of colourful ragtag unlikely subordinates, and he runs into trouble with
his bosses back home and also a biker gang based in Tulsa. A pretty similar set up to Lillyhammer
I hear, a show I haven’t yet seen. It's 9 episodes – the first season
at least – each around 40 minutes long, but that includes the credits and a montage of
the previous and next episode, so really you’re looking at just over half an hour per episode,
very easily digestible. Many of the mob guys are played by usual suspects if you’re familiar with
the genre, there’s Domenick Lombardozzi, who was in The Irishman, The Wire and Boardwalk Empire,
Max Casella who played a criminal mastermind in The Sopranos, Chris Caldovino who played a 47
year old kid in The Sopranos, and Vincent Piazza who played Lucky Luciano in Boardwalk Empire.
As well as the classic elements of crime stories where ex-cons come out of prison,
like reconnecting with estranged family members, reigniting old mob feuds etc, there is an element
of Stallone’s Demolition Man, the film where he was frozen for years and wakes up in a politically
correct, high-tech society. There are episodes dedicated to Stallone applying for a debit card,
taking a driving test, and being baffled at people having multiple pronouns.
Overall, like many people who watched Tulsa King I found myself pleasantly surprised. I’m currently
watching a show quite heavy on themes and symbolism, one you have to concentrate and think
about. I took a break in between a few seasons and wanted to watch something a little simple,
a little light, and Tulsa King scratched that itch. It’s fairly bog standard, it’s pulpy,
nothing you haven’t already seen before, and in places the overly dramatic melodrama can be cheesy
and elements of the plot are quite corny and ridiculous. I mean, the first episode has Stallone
walk into a weed shop, assault the security guard, tell the owner he’s taking over and that’s that,
he’s now in charge, stealing thousands and thousands of dollars from the store. And he
punches people a lot. That’s how most of his problems are solved. They do acknowledge his
age – he is playing a 70 plus year old, but it doesn’t seem to have much of an impact as
Stallone does go into Rambo mode a few times in the show. Don’t take it too seriously,
and you might just enjoy it. I know I did, though it did outstay its welcome and I found
myself watching the last few episodes to finish it rather than because I was actually enjoying it.
The show is carried by Sylvester Stallone’s charisma and screen presence. He’s very good
in it, very lively. With the wrong lead actor the show may have fallen apart. You have to
get past what he’s doen to his face and you do still get a bit of the “urhfufhughuffhADRIAN”
but if you can get past that, his comedic timing and his presence as a gangster is
solid. It makes you wonder what he could have done in a mob film back in his prime.
The side characters aren’t bad. Again, it’s ridiculous that Stallone’s new best friends can
hold their own against the biker gang but there’s no real irritating side characters. In fact,
the cab driver Stallone hires, the black kid, is one of the more interesting characters – the show
delves into his home life, his father’s desperate attempts to keep him away from a life of crime,
and this could have easily been the cheesiest and cliched aspect of the show but the scenes
with the kid and his dad were some of the best of the season. They felt authentically handled.
There is something about Tulsa King that makes it come off as a bit cheap, a bit unevenly made.
Firstly, there is a clear disconnect between the scenes in New York and the ones in Tulsa. Even
the aspect ratio – I noticed that the NY scene were done in the 1 85 format and Tulsa was mostly
in in the 2 35 one. Though it wasn’t consistent (again, going back to the cheap feeling) – I
think they were trying to make it easier to work out where scenes were taking pace, and
the New York stuff does feel grittier compared to Tulsa which has a lighter air about it. Sometimes
I feels like you’re watching two different shows – one where ex-con Stallone is desperately trying
to re-connect with his daughter and trying to mitigate the pressures coming from his mob
family. And then there’s another show where Benny Fazio shakes with anger when his neighbour’s dog
sh*t’s on his lawn, people spend their time riding horses around carefree, and a biker gang declares
war on some hippies for control over a nitrous balloon racket. I mean, couldn’t it have been
heroin or something, instead of party balloons? But other things too – basic things. I just
finished watching the last episode, and there’s a scene which ends and immediately cuts to another
scene with a guy just as he stars speaking speaking, no establishing shot, no breaks.
There’s a scene where a major character is shot and some emotional music swells up, but the sound
mixing was really poor and detracted from the moment. Even the final shot, of Stallone in a car,
it lasts for literally about 3 seconds before the credits immediately roll. It's really weird. The
editing in the show is very shoddy. And I noticed these things more and more towards the end of the
show – it was as if the editors were getting bored and tired and started to get sloppier with their
jobs. And because of things like this, and the knowledge that Sheridan is very much invested in
his Yellowstone universe, that Tulsa King does sometimes come off as a side pet project where
the creators didn’t give it its full attention. It did start to run out of puff towards the end.
The start of the show was nice and surprisingly watchable – it’s more of a light comedy for
geezers than a crime drama, but it did get stale quite fast. Like I said, approach it in the right
way and you’ll enjoy it. But the more you research it, the more strange the final output seems,
as for example names like Terence Winter are listed in the credits. And you think to yourself,
isn’t that the creator of Boardwalk Empire and one of the writers of The Sopranos? Surely the
writing should have been a lot better? Tulsa King is not prestige television.
It is more of a comfort food kind of show, one to turn your brain off and relax while watching. The
people most satisfied I think will be Stallone’s fanbase, as it’s about 5 hours’ worth of him
constantly getting the better of anyone around him and is heavily reliant on his magnetism.
Its goofy but very much enjoyable. That being said the concept doesn’t quite match the content, as it
doesn’t really feel like you’re watching a show about a man re-adjusting to life after 25 years
in the can, more like Stallone hanging out with a bunch of millennials going “I don’t understand
youse kids”. I guess one of the issues is that it doesn’t lean hard enough into a genre. Like,
if it’s a comedy, make it more funny. If it’s a mob show, make the stakes feel more real and put
some real drama in it. But because it dabbles here and there it ends up feeling like a bit empty,
when there was definitely potential for more. All in all though, it’s OK. Wat did you think
of it? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for watching.