“A Wicked, Decadent Comedy About Our Impending Apocalypse”
by Chuck Brown | Slant Magazine | March 25, 2018
Source: Showtime
With Billions, co-creators and showrunners Brian Koppelman and David Levien utilize a narrative structure that recalls Michael Mann’s Heat. Opposing worlds are contrasted in both, showing how similarly obsessive methods can serve conflicting ends that ultimately complement and even bolster one another in terms of pure process and gradations of moral relativity. In Heat, the lines between hero and villain are more material: Robert De Niro’s thief is a killer and—no matter how principled and charismatic he might be—this puts him in a morally inferior position to Al Pacino’s detective, even if the latter has a penchant for cutting investigative corners. But in Billions, the moral lines dividing the dueling parties have grown compellingly murky.
