Mark Ruffalo’s most recent outing in the crime/thriller genre, as Tom Brandis in HBO’s Task, carries an unexpected heart. What seems to start as any other detective show ends up reminding me of Andrew Garfield’s classic, “Under the Banner of Heaven.” A detective show that urges you not to solve a crime, but to face the most enigmatic puzzle of all, the human psyche. The crime part is also intriguing, but it acts more like a stepping stone.
The show’s emotional grounding is really strong and well thought out. Instead of setting up a traditional good guy/bad guy dynamic to dictate the unfolding of the plot, the show deliberately sets up two guys trying to make the best of the predicament they are in. This puts them on an inevitable collision course, which resolves itself in a neatly written climax. Tom Brandis, a functionally-retired FBI agent, is assigned to investigate a string of robberies connected to Robbie Prendergrast, played by Tom Pelphrey, but that leads Brandis to get entangled in a very intricate web. No character feels any more or less pivotal than all the rest.
A considerable amount of screen time, coupled with a substantial impact on the plot, makes every character feel like they’re adequately explored, at least all the important ones. What really anchors the show is the quiet tension bubbling beneath every interaction. There is a lived-in quality to these characters; their choices seem very “human.” The show resists the temptation to sensationalize. Instead, it lingers in the gray areas where motivation and morality blur into something far more compelling and realistic. Mark Ruffalo, in particular, plays Brandis with a kind of weary precision. He is not the archetypal “Sherlock Holmes” style coded detective dragged back in for one last case; you can tell in seconds that Brandis is biding time till he’s sweetly reunited with his maker. He is a man trying to hold together whatever is left of him, and that gets harder for him to do as the show progresses.
Pelphrey’s Robbie, on the other hand, is written with a surprising tenderness. The show never excuses him, but it refuses to dehumanize him either. He becomes less of an antagonist and more of a mirror, reflecting back everything Brandis has spent a lifetime avoiding. He is never portrayed as a “bad person” despite the tons of laws he breaks, and that takes skillful writing.