TV: Sucker Free City

Sucker Free City could have been amazing. It could have been The Sopranos for Showtime. Instead, the execs at Showtime balked at turning the pilot into a full series, because they wanted the pilot's director, Spike Lee, to stick around and direct a majority of the episodes, and Lee, not surprisingly, had other things to do. (Like wasting his talent on shitty movies like She Hate Me.) It's business decisions like that that make Showtime a distant afterthought to HBO's overwhelming market dominance.

At least the pilot did get made, a full two-hour Spike Lee joint. It takes place in the most dangerous neighborhoods of my favorite city in the world, San Francisco. Sucker Free = S.F. Get it?

Sucker Free City follows three of the city's street gangs, one white, one black, one Chinese. Well, the white one isn't so much a gang as one person, Nick Wade, played by Ben Crowley. His family has been forced out of their home in the Mission District by the yuppie-fication of the neighborhood that followed the Internet boom, and the attendant skyrocketing real estate prices. Nick's family moves to Hunter's Point, a predominantly black, crime-ridden zone. Nick's dabbled in credit card theft and minor dope deals till then; after the move, he gets drawn into more serious and violent crime.

The V-Dubs are the gang that HQs across the street from Nick's new home. K-Luv is a soldier rising through the ranks, but still is enough his own man to counsel his 12-year-old sidekick that he could be much more if he just stayed out of crime. You get the impression K-Luv got the same advice as a kid, and ignored it. K-Luv reminds me of Deadwood's Al Swearengen, so much smarter than the people around him, so much better able to see the big picture, but still given to ruthless violence. It's a great performance by Anthony Mackie, all suppressed vulnerability and smoldering intelligence.

Ken Leung plays Lincoln, who collects protection money for the Chinese mafia in Chinatown, and who is recklessly getting in over his head. He's romancing the boss's daughter, who is already engaged to a boy the boss approves of; and he's skimming profits, which leads to a confrontation with the always great James Hong, who plays a local businessman who's wise to Lincoln's treacherous behavior, and threatens him with blackmail. Lincoln is headstrong and careless, but he's also tremendously proud of his heritage; a standout moment is when he tries to instill that pride in his younger brothers by reminding them that Yao Ming dunked on Shaq.

K-Luv shares that racial pride -- another fine scene is when he explains the colors of his headband to his sidekick: red for his blood, black for his skin, green for mother Africa. Nick, on the other hand, has no pride. He's a white boy with no culture but what he's stolen from his black neighbors, and he's ashamed of his family, led by hippie parents John Savage and Kathy Baker. Savage plays the kind of foolishly idealistic artist who sees the bars on the windows of his new house in Hunter's Point, and thinks of them as metaphorical barriers to be removed. Problem is, his new neighbors see them only as literal barriers, and once Savage takes them down, they rob his house.

The three main characters clash when the V-Dubs become aware of the rampant bootlegging in Chinatown of the rap album of one of their members, Killa Ski. K-Luv sees the upside of bootlegging -- low risk, low violence, high profit -- and enlists Nick in the scheme, because he can't figure out how to burn CDs on the laptop he stole from Nick. Nick gets the laptop back, and a new friend and ally. K-Luv then invades Lincoln's territory in Chinatown with his bootlegs; when Lincoln comes to confront him, K-Luv proposes that, in exchange for preventing the piracy of Killa Ski's album in Chinatown, he'll cut Lincoln in on his new operation. It's another great scene, with K-Luv proving unquestionably that he's the one dealing from a position of strength, but still allowing Lincoln to keep his pride.

There's so much going on in this pilot; it's an embarrassment of riches, from the acting, to the smart, tough, intricate writing, to Spike Lee's trademark visual flair. It's a heartbreaker the continuing series never developed. Sucker Free City is a great set-up, but it's almost all set-up; dozens of threads are left unresolved at the end of the two hours. I watched this during a free preview weekend of Showtime, and found myself wanting more; Showtime's failure to provide more is why Showtime is completely inessential.