Great Performances Save Apple TV+’s Wildly Convoluted Drug Heist Drama

Atlanta‘s Brian Tyree Henry and Narcos star Wagner Moura are teaming up for a Philly drug adventure in Dope Thief, created by The Batman and Bad Boys for Life scribe Peter Craig and with executive producer Ridley Scott helming the pilot episode, which means it guarantees a certain amount of melodrama and a fair share of action. Apple TV+’s drug heist drama is also based on the book by crime novelist Dennis Tafoya.

While Henry and Moura, along with the rest of the all-star cast, anchor the series, Craig and Scott’s movie background doesn’t make the easiest translation to television. Everything is shot beautifully, and there are cinema-worthy showdowns at almost every turn, but Dope Thief isn’t always sure what to do with its eight-episode runway. The end result is a lot of Emmy tape for the cast, but not the most satisfying ride for the audience.

What Is ‘Dope Thief’ About?

Dope Thief follows two lifelong friends from Philadelphia who pose as DEA agents to steal money from low-level drug dealers in their neighborhood. Things go south when they take on a meth lab outside the city that already has an undercover DEA agent investigating it and is the drop spot for a massive cartel. Loaded with stolen cash, best friends Ray (Henry) and Manny (Moura) must figure out who set them up and who is after them before warring drug cartels kill them and everyone they care about.

The stakes escalate as different parties start to get involved and their families refuse to cooperate, pushing Ray and Manny’s bond to its breaking point. With the walls closing in on them and everyone they care about, they have to decide if their friendship is worth saving over their lives and their respective futures.

‘Dope Thief’s Best Asset Is the Brotherhood

Ray and Manny’s friendship is the backbone of the series, even when Ray takes on the bulk of the heavy lifting in saving their butts. It makes for the strongest moments over the course of the show, whether they are battling Nazi clowns or arguing over the state of their souls after the mess they’ve gotten themselves in. The desire to save each other not only gives these duo an emotional drive through the plot but also provides the series with its best comedic moments (though Dope Thief could definitely be categorized as a dark comedy).

The only thing lacking about Ray and Manny’s relationship is that its origins are never fully explained. There are brief flashbacks that imply they met on the bus to juvenile detention, and we know they’ve been friends for over 15 years, but the show never explicitly details what makes the two so loyal to each other. Reinforcing their bond would have been a better use of some of the show’s story real estate rather than some of the dead-end shenanigans they get themselves into.

Maybe ‘Dope Thief’ Should Have Been a Movie

The aforementioned story real estate is Dope Thief‘s biggest flaw. The show manages climactic moments in every episode to get the heart racing and to keep the audience engaged. Still, the overall plot jumps through too many hoops before getting the audience any real answers. There are a lot of hypotheticals and wrong assumptions that take a frustratingly long time to work out. Did Dope Thief really need eight episodes to tell this story, or would it have been better off as a condensed two-and-a-half-hour movie with half the twists? The show ultimately answers the pertinent questions – well, most of them – and while it’s good to better understand the series’ bigger picture, the juice of the end doesn’t feel worth the squeeze it took to get there. Condensing this to get to a resolution faster would have helped.

That’s not to say that Dope Thief is bad, or even that it’s not good. It’s impossible to say that with every key player putting in top-notch performances. Obviously, Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura are worth the price of admission, but Kate Mulgrew as Ray’s adoptive mother and Ving Rhames as Ray’s delinquent father don’t disappoint either. Liz Carribel Sierra steals every scene she’s in as Manny’s high-maintenance girlfriend, Sherri, while Marin Ireland is also the most intriguing part of the DEA side of the equation as she tries to put the pieces of her case back together after Manny and Ray inadvertently blow it to hell with their scam. The performances minimize the pacing issues of the series because you do just want to spend more time with these characters and hope they find a way out of the giant mess.

Ultimately, Dope Thief has an intriguing premise that elevates it beyond your typical drug heist series, and it’s carried off by world-class actors. However, some dead weight in the writing could have been shaved off or sharpened up to make a more coherent story. In the end, it’s not really clear what Dope Thief wants to say or even what it wants the audience to feel. There’s good Emmy tape for every series regular, but there are also big question marks left by the end of the series that may not be enough to entice viewers into a Season 2.

Dope Thief premieres March 14 with its first two episodes on Apple TV+. Episodes continue weekly.