ESPN's 'Bronx Is Burning' scorches

BY DIANE WERTS | diane.werts@newsday.com

July 9, 2007

ESPN knows drama, maybe better than the TNT channel that uses that slogan.

The sports cabler's first series, "Playmakers," was a surprisingly hard-hitting pro football saga. It hit so hard, in fact, that the NFL reportedly "strongly suggested" the channel not renew the award-winner, despite its keenly compelling depiction of the sport's money, drugs, misbehavior and, oh yeah, on-field competition.

Now, the subject is baseball (another sport to which the channel holds game rights), and ESPN has this time chosen the relative safety of the past and a dead protagonist.

"The Bronx Is Burning" revolves around late Yankees manager Billy Martin and specifically his 1977 season, when the mercurial Martin returned the Bombers to prominence with a World Series win, with/despite the help/interference of owner George Steinbrenner and the talent/temperament of free-agent slugger Reggie Jackson.

As well as New Yorkers know these three characters, it's amazing how quickly the real faces fade and the three actors here become their own "strong-willed people," as Steinbrenner puts it in yet another make-nice meeting with his contentious manager.

Oliver Platt, an actor who threatens to steamroll any portrayal (witness his wanton sex-and-drugs lawyering in Showtime's "Huff"), is actually the perfect casting for the overbearing owner, whose familiar visage is quickly erased by Platt's starched '70s hair and browbeating patter.

Turturro's tour de force
Even more impressive playing Martin is John Turturro (Emmy winner as Tony Shalhoub's brother on "Monk") -- a New Yorker playing a folksy westerner, a cerebral actor inhabiting an impulsive personality.

Though this role would seem less natural than, say, Howard Cosell (Turturro played the scrappy sportscaster in the TV movie "Monday Night Mayhem"), he disappears into the brooding, volatile, hard-drinking manager with no more external aid than some outsized ears.

The tempestuous relationship of owner and employee -- soon to become ex-employee and then employee again, several times over -- provides a dramatic bedrock that "Rescue Me" co-star Daniel Sunjata's depiction of the über-confident Jackson doesn't so penetrate as chip away at, though the star player's ego certainly impacts a Yankees team that gets some strong screen time of its own.

Eric Jensen makes a memorable Thurman Munson, their beloved captain/catcher, while Joe Grifasi captures the offbeat resilience of coach/ confidant Yogi Berra.

"The Bronx Is Burning" also captures something else crucial -- the roiling, reeling city in which such sports spectacle was only part of the high drama.

The raucous '77 mayor's race unfolds here in interwoven news footage, with Ed Koch, Mario Cuomo and hat-sporting sparkplug Bella Abzug challenging Abe Beame in the wake of President Gerald Ford's "drop dead" response to New York City's financial crisis.

Separately re-created in dramatized fashion is the contemporaneous serial murder spree of Son of Sam. As police detectives track the letter-writing shooter, his reign of terror is expressively chronicled in prose pecked out by then-Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin (played by Michael Rispoli of "Third Watch" and "The Sopranos").

Later a Newsday scribe, Breslin isn't this paper's only connection to the film. Sports columnist Steve Jacobson is also portrayed (by "Scrubs" actor Alan Ruck). And both men served as advisers on the production (along with player turned broadcaster Fran Healy, ex-Yankee Graig Nettles and former team publicity chief/author Marty Appel).

Historic video
Authenticity is something to which the film clearly aspires, fairly seamlessly incorporating much vintage footage of both baseball action (including the famed Martin-Jackson dugout clash) and news events.

On-screen graphics identify players and other participants. The '70s era is evoked in video of World Trade Center climber George Willig, in references to cultural touchstones such as the self-help fable "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," and in background props including a locker-room cigarette machine. A sort of wah-wah disco score percolates on the soundtrack.

Which means we should remind ourselves "The Bronx Is Burning" is a dramatization, not a documentary. The first three hours (all that ESPN provided for preview) seem to paint Jackson, in particular, more as a flamboyantly egotistical jerk than a shrewdly self-assured loner.

It's likely the truth lies somewhere in between. How Jackson and Steinbrenner react to the film will be interesting to see.

Martin died in 1989, in a drunken Christmas Day car crash near Binghamton. At his death, he was again working -- as a special consultant -- for the Yankees. Steinbrenner never got the chance to fire him a sixth time.

THE BRONX IS BURNING. Billy Martin, George Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson go mano a mano, and (loud)mouth to (loud)mouth, in a sharp and snazzy eight-week docudrama re-creating what the 1977 Yankees meant to a troubled New York City. Series premieres Monday night at 10 on ESPN.