American Gigolo Review: Jon Bernthal Was Born for This, But What Is This?

Earlier this year, writer, director, and prolific Facebook user Paul Schrader shared his thoughts on the forthcoming TV adaptation of his 1980 neo-noir American Gigolo. "Some years ago I received a call from Paramount asking about remaking American Gigolo as a series," he wrote, after confirming his lack of involvement with a simple 'No.' "I replied that I thought it was a terrible idea — times had changed, internet porn had redefined male sex work, viruses, etc." Of course, the project went ahead without him.

It's not required for the creators behind a piece of beloved IP to be involved with a remake or a reboot — Penny Marshall's spirit lives on in Prime Video's recent A League of Their Own, which she gave her blessing to before she died in 2018 — but Schrader made an interesting point in refuting the series: What place does a story like American Gigolo have in 2022? It's a valid question for any adaptation of an existing property; we've long since reached the point where we now get dozens of them per year, and the least you can hope from each one is that it will honor the original material while simultaneously finding something new to say. American Gigolo, premiering Sept. 11 on Showtime, is neither the best nor the worst case scenario, falling somewhere square in the middle. 

The series, developed by David Hollander, though he exited during production after misconduct allegations, has a well-considered connection to Schrader's slow-burning character study that turned Richard Gere into a leading man, making just enough references to satisfy fans (using Blondie's "Call Me" as the theme song is as much of a "duh" as it is a nice touch), but not so many to confuse viewers who aren't familiar with the original. The story may be set in the present day, but it still centers on Julian Kaye (played here by Jon Bernthal), a former escort who goes to prison after being framed for the murder of a woman. One of the series' wisest decisions is to not stretch the events of the two-hour movie across a whole ten-hour season. (Three of Season 1's eight episodes were provided to critics for review.) Julian spends 15 years behind bars, but we only get a few glimpses at his time there; he's exonerated at the beginning of the first episode, after a killer-for-hire on his deathbed confesses to the murder and the framing. It's conflicting for Julian, proven innocent but thrust back into a world he doesn't recognize with nowhere to go. Showtime's American Gigolo is focused on what happens next.

Or it would be, if not for the ways the show gets bogged down by constant timeline splitting, as well as some convoluted secondary plots. In one, Detective Sunday (Rosie O'Donnell, replacing Hector Elizondo from the film) continues to look into who, exactly, hired the man who framed Julian. In another, Julian's former girlfriend, Michelle (Gretchen Mol, filling the Lauren Hutton role), now a tech mogul's wife rather than a politician's, searches for her son, who has recently run away from home. There are also the frequent flashbacks to Julian's troubled childhood, where we watch his career as a sex worker begin at 15, after his mother sends him away from their life in poverty to live with Olga (Sandrine Holt — I absolutely love to see a Better Call Saul alum anywhere), a French madame.

6.8

American Gigolo

at Showtime

Like

• It's the role Jon Bernthal was born to play
• The third episode ends promisingly

Dislike

• The constant childhood flashbacks don't work
• Side plots fall flat
• The material needed more updating

I'm going to say something controversial: I don't think every show needs childhood flashbacks. In fact, I think most could benefit from going without. I understand it's an easy way to provide context, but it often (as it does here) results in over-explaining details that could be communicated in more subtle ways. Did Julian Kaye need a tragic backstory? I can see a case for it, but the ways the show addresses it via these flashbacks reads as troubling. Before Olga even takes teen Julian (Gabriel LaBelle) away, we see him being sexually abused by an older neighbor; later, at Olga's sprawling Hollywood mansion, he meets her niece, Isabelle (Lizzie Brocheré), who also grows up to become a sex worker after being groomed by her aunt. Going in, I was intrigued by how the series might adapt to the ways the cultural perception of sex work has shifted (especially male sex work, which is rarely explored in film or television), which made it disappointing to see it embrace the overdone cliché of abused children growing up to become sex workers. It results in what sometimes feels like an unnecessary villainization of the profession.

To the show's credit, it does try to unpack Julian's feelings about what happened to him as a child. Still, American Gigolo could have only been helped by eliminating those flashbacks entirely, or at least utilizing them more sparingly, as they only distract from the more dynamic story of adult Julian, trying to reinvent himself as he returns to Los Angeles post-incarceration, finding an unexpected confidant in his new landlady (Yolonda Ross) and reconnecting with an old friend, Lorenzo (Wayne Brady), who tries to convince a reluctant Julian to return to sex work. 

American Gigolo is as much about the cyclical nature of abuse as it is about the cyclical nature of humanity. Can you ever outrun your past, or is it better to coexist with it? The series meanders around that question for two and a half episodes before really beginning to delve into it with a haunting sequence at the end of the third, in which Julian begins to dip a toe back into the riptide of his old life. As Julian, Bernthal never misses, but he's especially excellent here.

It's never made sense why Bernthal hasn't quite blown up despite years of fascinating work. In American Gigolo, his magnetism comes as no surprise but is still thrilling to watch. He resists all temptation to mimic Gere, making Julian wholly his own. In Bernthal's hands, he's sadder, more vulnerable. Preternaturally charming, but unpredictable. He plays everything closely to his chest, creating an air of mystery that Bernthal only allows to fall away in Julian's solitary moments. He's by far the standout, almost to the detriment of the rest of the cast, many of whom are very good (Brady is a welcome addition, and Holt does what she can with a somewhat thankless role) but don't fully reach his level. 

The flashbacks that do work are the less regular ones to Julian's days as an escort. Bernthal is luminous in them, listening attentively to the stories his clients, who were largely older women, tell him about their unsatisfying marriages, giving them gentle advice and pep talks. It's also nice to watch him fall in love with Michelle, even if the Julian and Michelle of the series don't find the footing of the sexy, searching dance that made the Julian and Michelle of the film work so well. Bernthal comes alive in those moments, painting a picture of just how uniquely suited Julian was for his job, and it makes the scenes in the present, where he's a heavily tattooed shell of that person, hit harder. This is the ideal role for an actor who has made a career out of examining masculinity with a fine-toothed comb. (Though his skill for dissecting macho stereotypes on screen has not translated as well off screen lately.) Will this performance finally make him a star? It's unclear, but the series might be headed in a promising direction.

What American Gigolo succeeds at is setting itself apart from its predecessor, proving that it's more than just a glossy restoration of something we've already seen. Still, it struggles to find its footing as a modern story. If the tail end of Episode 3 is any indication, there could be good things to come. But that might be a lot to ask from a show that, at its core, struggles to untangle itself from the confines of the past.

Premieres: Sunday, Sept. 11 at 9/8c on Showtime
Who's in it: Jon Bernthal, Rosie O'Donnell, Gretchen Mol, Wayne Brady, Sandrine Holt
Who's behind it: David Hollander
For fans of: American Gigolo, Jon Bernthal
How many episodes we watched: 3 out of 8