"Silent Angel" is a fictional story integrated into real history, depicting three atypical detectives in New York City in 1896 to track down the horrific boy serial killer, the charm of the series is not only the old-school method of investigating murder at the end of the 19th century, but also the chaotic atmosphere that is about to enter the new century, everything in the world is subverting and innovating, and the chaotic and romantic feelings are everywhere in the details of the series.
The biggest difference between Silent Angel and other crime investigation dramas is that none of the three protagonists are real detectives, and this special squad consists of a psychiatrist, a newspaper illustrator, and a secretary to the police chief.
Audiences who are accustomed to the brave detectives single-handedly challenging murderers may not be used to watching it at first, or even understand why the plot is set up like this, but when we understand the background of the times, we will fall in love with these characters.
At the end of the 19th century, when mental illness was stigmatized and psychiatry was seen as heretical, when women had no right to vote, when fingerprint recognition had not yet been accepted as evidence, when people of color and Jews were still discriminated against, when the United States expanded the Great West and Indians continued to clash.
When so many little boys were brutally disemboweled one after another and left in the dirty and chaotic corners of New York City, people could not understand what kind of demons could do such things, and the police could not trace the cases of such criminals who had nothing to do with the victims, so the pioneer of psychological profiles, the psychologist Reszlo, became the most likely important person to solve the case.
Fans of "Mr. Brooks" or "Mind Hunter" will be quite familiar with Reslo's methods, trying to speculate on the psychological condition of the murderer through the pattern of his crime, deriving a theory that explains the motive, and then trying to predict the murderer's next step before arresting him.
The serial killer of Silent Angels has a fairly strong sense of mystery, and his full face has not been revealed until the last episode, and many of the killer's perspectives have become more terrifying and unpredictable.
This tall murderer has the skill of flying over the wall, and has a special way of torturing the corpse for each victim, as if he is religiously performing a mysterious ritual to satisfy the desires of the heart.
In an era when there were no monitors or computer databases, the protagonists had to go door-to-door to investigate where the murderer might have stayed, interrogate children working odd jobs on the street to gather intelligence, go to the vast sea of books with only paper records to search for names, travel to the West just to study the possible effects of Indian rituals on the murderer, and the zero-digit investigation method has an old-school romance, and also lets the audience see the classical taste of CSI before it appeared.
The psychologist Reslo, played by Daniel Bruch, and Mr. Brooks' Hannibal Lecter have some similarities, both of whom suffered horrific events in their childhoods, and the pain and anger caused by this trauma make them capable of "empathizing" with the murderer.
Reslo struggled to contain his anger in the coroner's room many times, and when he looked at the victim's corpse and imagined the murderer's mood, the demons in his heart were also stirring, shaking the shackles under the civilized system. Such a demon became the fuse of friction between him and his partner, an elbow that he could not analyze objectively, but it was also the key to solving the case in the end.
Daniel Bruch, who became even better known for his role as Zemo in Captain America: Civil War, was just as brilliant in Silent Angel, taking the suppressed anger, the deeply wounded armedness, and the kindness hidden under the harshness just right.
Daniel Bruch's performance also contrasts sharply with Luke Evans, with whom he has many rivals, giving the two characters a more unique flavor of brotherhood.
John Moore, played by Luke Evans, is a New York Times painter who was called into the team by Rezlow because of his painting talents and relationship with Theodore Roosevelt, and through his matchmaking, he received a lot of NYPD insider intelligence and Roosevelt's assistance.
Viewers with a modicum of American history should recognize Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, who became chief of the New York City Police Department in 1895, and the fictional character of John Moore is based on the image of Jacob Rees, Roosevelt's classmate at Harvard University and an investigative reporter for the New York Times.
John Moore did not have the intelligence of Rezlo, but had an action-oriented personality that tried various intuitions, and many deep investigations into the tiger's den caused him to almost die, and after great risks, he finally obtained a logical blind spot that could not be covered by Reslow's theoretical thinking.
Watching John go to various criminal hotbeds to investigate the case will pinch a cold sweat, because this playboy painter does not have any combat ability and camouflage skills, often as soon as he enters the investigation area, he is targeted by the enemy's minions and knocked down at least 3 times.
The third character to actively hunt down the serial killer is Dakota Fanning's Sala Howard, as the first female NYPD employee, she also has a strong sense of justice and investigative instincts, and together with John Moore, she finds many new clues, but also gradually develops ambiguous feelings.
Dakota Fanning is the little girl who starred with Tom Cruise in the alien disaster film "World Wars" in 2005, a child actress who has accumulated solid experience at only 24 years old, and her role in "Silent Angel" is a new woman who breaks through the shackles of the times, boldly challenges the male-dominated police environment while maintaining ladylike rules, is not afraid of the threat of corrupt colleagues, dares to oppose the killers representing the nobility, and goes deeper into the wilderness to investigate alone.
In terms of plot details, "Silent Angel" is quite good in the management of smoke bombs and villains, except for the murderer, the villain is the most powerful aristocrat in New York City, they are the rulers of the old era, establishing the foundation of New York City, but because of their own interests, they obstruct the investigation of Reslo and others at every turn.
Roosevelt's transition with these old nobles is also a very important foreshadowing, he went from the beginning to the same straight as Reslo and refused to compromise, to the end of the final finally recognized the importance of political compromise, with the skills in "Batman: The Dark Knight", instantly reversed his high and low situation with the enemy.
In addition to deliberately setting the era in which the story takes place during Roosevelt's police term, "Silent Angel" is also interspersed with many celebrity character cameos in the original book and series, just like "Da Vinci's Demon", allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the times.
Special celebrity characters include Edison, who had just invented the movie projector, who appeared in the movie theater when John and Mary were dating, and J. Thompson, who had a lot of scenes. P． Morgan, the driving force behind financial modernization, holds the key to ushering in a new century for New York and views the serial killings from the perspective of a businessman, clashing with Reslo's idealism.