The Penguin Review: Cristin Milioti's Sofia Falcone Is the True Star of This Gotham City Mob Drama

Running into a common problem for mature superhero spin-offs, The Penguin tries a little too hard to be a serious, grounded drama. Like Joker, it draws inspiration from New York thrillers of the 1970s and '80s, and like Netflix's Daredevil, it focuses on laboriously plotted criminal feuds. However, its most compelling elements lean into the weirder, more fantastical side of Gotham City: mentally unstable villains in snappy outfits, fictional street drugs with silly names, and gothic childhood tragedies.

The Penguin reintroduces its title character (aka Oswald "Oz" Cobb, played by Colin Farrell) as a mid-level gangster, keen to make his mark on Gotham's drug trade. After the events of The Batman, the city is literally a disaster zone. The slums are suffering from flood damage, FEMA trucks are being used for drug deals, and many people are grieving loved ones who died in the Riddler's terrorist attack. Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz) is one such person: a sweet young man who recently lost his family, leaving him at a loose end. Oz targets him for a predatory kind of mentorship, and soon Victor is a cog in the machine of his criminal ambitions. 

Oz's own story is a serviceable but undistinguished type of rags-to-riches mob narrative, and to be frank it often left me bored. The real draw here is the show's depiction of Gotham as a place of heightened chaos and rotten infrastructure, with Oz's main rival, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), as the true standout antihero.

Heiress to the Falcone crime family, Sofia is better known by her serial killer moniker, the Hangman; she was committed to Arkham Asylum for killing multiple women. Recently exonerated, she remains a social pariah, loathed by the public and pushed out of her rightful place in the family business. Her stint in Arkham left her twitchy and wounded, but it also gave her an edge. As she attempts to claw her way back into the boys' club of organized crime, she's willing to go to shocking extremes. She also boasts a gloriously eye-catching wardrobe, strolling into business meetings and interrogation scenes in a series of statement dresses, fur coats, and glitzy accessories, usually paired with Amy Winehouse quantities of eyeliner. This combination of flair and emotional volatility is crucial for any great villain in the Batman mythos. 

Stealing the show from its A-list lead, Sofia offers a more rewarding synthesis of classic Gotham themes, exploring crime and mental illness with an edge of exaggerated melodrama. Meanwhile, Oz Cobb loses something in the transition from florid supervillain to grimy gangster.

6.2

The Penguin

at HBO

Like

• Cristin Milioti gives a fantastic performance as the volatile mob boss Sofia Falcone
• Glossy production values and quirky Gotham City details make this a worthy spin-off for The Batman (2022)
• An excellent final episode makes up for some of the weaker writing earlier on

Dislike

• Colin Farrell's prosthetics detract from his performance
• The main plot and title character often fall back on generic mob drama material
• The Penguin isn't interesting enough to measure up to Sofia Falcone

Farrell's prosthetics are an unavoidable issue. He dons a fatsuit and an entirely new face for this role, and while his fake nose and hair are impressively plausible up close, the layer of extra skin means he loses a lot of facial movement — which is, you know, sort of a key issue for an actor.

Before The Batman even came out, these prosthetics were a divisive choice. I personally consider fatsuits to be unethical and distasteful, confirming that Hollywood would rather put a thin person in the makeup chair for three hours than just cast a fat actor. But even if you don't care about that, the basic concept behind Farrell's "realistic" makeover is pretty ridiculous.

If they wanted Oz Cobb to resemble an ugly guy from a 1970s crime thriller, they should've just hired someone who looks like that. Instead they cast a handsome movie star and smothered him in makeup that actively hampers his performance. Farrell's work here is so concerned with artifice — the facial scarring, the pillow-like belly, the limp, the broad New York accent — that psychological depth becomes a distant priority.

Reimagined by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, this version of the Penguin is an unlikeable guy who desperately wants to be liked. A yapper who grooms a young sidekick primarily so he has someone to talk to. A slimeball who brute-forces his way into power, persuading people to overlook his blatantly manipulative and duplicitous nature.

On a personal level, Oz's only true loyalty lies with his ailing mother (Deirdre O'Connell), and like Danny DeVito's more clownish Penguin in Batman Returns, his appearance and abrasive demeanor exclude him from Gotham's corrupt elite. Twisting this flaw into an opportunity, he brands himself as a working-class outsider candidate for the criminal underworld. 

It's a type of anti-charisma that clearly appeals to Farrell, who has dedicated much of his recent career to unflattering character roles in projects like The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Banshees of Inisherin, and Andrew Haigh's nautical thriller The North Water, where he made a far more convincing physical transformation to play a chillingly brutal Victorian sailor. On paper, Oz Cobb continues this trend, but in practice, it seems like a lot of unnecessary work for a somewhat generic gangster role. 

Speaking as someone who watched all of Marvel's gritty urban Netflix spin-offs, The Penguin does feel like a more sophisticated operation. Its production values measure up to The Batman's vision for Gotham, and the ensemble cast is packed with established character actors: Clancy Brown and Shohreh Aghdashloo as the heads of the Maroni family, Theo Rossi reprising his hypnotically sleazy vibes from Marvel's Luke Cage, Carmen Ejogo as Oz's sex worker girlfriend. However, the writing isn't particularly deep, falling back on mob genre archetypes. While the tangle of feuds and double-crosses build to a strong finale, I spent much of the show's runtime covertly waiting for Sofia Falcone to come back on screen — which isn't exactly a good sign for the Penguin's impact as a protagonist.

Premieres: Thursday, Sept. 19 at 9/8c on HBO
Who's in it: Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Carmen Ejogo, Clancy Brown
Who's behind it: Lauren LeFranc (showrunner), Craig Zobel (director)
For fans of: Daredevil, Batman, classic gangster movies
How many episodes we watched: 8 of 8