In “Dope Thief,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+, old friends Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura) are running a scam in which, dressed as DEA agents, they scare small-time Philadelphia dope dealers out of money and drugs. They pride themselves on being well prepared, knowing the layout of whatever house they’re about to bust into waving badges and guns, but getting out without violence. Apart from that, and staying straight, it’s a quiet life.
Into this balanced world comes Rick (Spenser Granese), who suggests they might find the work less dangerous and more profitable a couple of hours outside of town; and, though anyone watching at home can see this is a mistake and Rick is not cut out to be a reliable collaborator, off they go, into a caper in which everything goes wrong. Suddenly, Ray and Manny find themselves caught between the cops and a cartel, as an unidentified voice delivers increasingly scary messages to the effect that everyone they hold dear is now a target, and hairy bikers circle ominously.
That’s about all I’ll say about the plot, except that it will go in mostly surprising ways and involve a large cast of memorable characters, including Kate Mulgrew (terrific, a galaxy away from Capt. Janeway, committing to the Philly accent) as Theresa, who raised Ray after his father (Ving Rhames) went to prison, and Nesta Cooper as Michelle, a sympathetic lawyer who prompts one to wonder “Will this become a love interest?”
Dustin Nguyen plays Son Pham, a Vietnamese American gangster, civilized, but not in the slimy way gangsters are sometimes civilized in the moving pictures, with Kiều Chinh as his steely mother. Liz Caribel is Sherry, Manny’s girlfriend; they’re moving in together. On the side of the law, most notably, is Mina (Marin Ireland), a melancholy DEA agent who can only speak in whispers, alongside a host of other officers and officials characters you will tell apart by their size and shape and disposition, but whose names you won’t need to know.
The cleverest mystery is no better than its characters and, when it’s made for the screen, the actors who play them. There are a lot of reasons to watch “Dope Thief,” but none more compelling than Henry, in his first leading role — though, as the rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, one could argue that he was the most valuable player in Donald Glover’s “Atlanta.” Substantial and soulful, projecting authority and vulnerability as the scene calls for — sometimes at once — the actor has brains, body and soul; he’s exciting, the way that, say, Marlon Brando was exciting, whatever the person he was playing was up to.
It may take a minute or an episode to calibrate your moral compass to accept Ray and Manny as the heroes they are, good guys not just when compared to the very bad guys coming at them — though, sure, they could stand to work on themselves — and to adjust to the series’ sometimes uneasy mix of humor, sentiment and suspense, brutality and delicacy.
It’s a melodrama whose naturalism supports the series’ themes of friendship, family and sacrifice, explicitly stated at times, but most often demonstrated. People talk as people do; the scenes between Henry and Moura, Henry and Mulgrew and Henry and Rhames are especially good, each in its own way playing notes of suspicion, alienation and love.
Adapted by Peter Craig (“The Batman”) from Dennis Tafoya’s 2009 novel, “Dope Thief” is not thematically fancy. It has nothing to say about the state of the world or human nature, except as regards these particular humans and, I suppose, the greed that ultimately lies behind every crime story — but that’s a given. I wouldn’t insult it by calling it “gritty” or a thriller — those come a dime a dozen these days — but there is some grit, and many thrills; more than one calamitous encounter feels like a potential climax until you check and see it’s only the third or fourth or fifth episode — out of eight — which does get a little exhausting; I wouldn’t suggest bingeing, yet it’s hard to step off that express.
I would suggest watching with someone you can ask, “Now how do those people know each other again?” It can get a little confusing, and there’s too much responsibility given a character introduced late in the game, which I regard as bad sportsmanship in genre writing. But it will all be explained in the very satisfying end. I’d call the closing scene and final exchange just about perfect, except I’d leave out “just about.”
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