'Rectify' review: Stay with it
Adelaide Clemens, left, and Aden Young in a scene from the drama series "Rectify." Credit: AP
This six-part series -- created and written by Ray McKinnon -- takes place over the first seven days of Daniel's release; it's also Sundance's first scripted series.
On death row, he contemplated "the time in between the seconds . . ." -- and "Rectify" seems to want viewers to as well. But the story picks up, and something rich, powerful and emotionally engaging slowly begins to emerge with it. There's real beauty here, too, but it's often a strange elusive beauty, just off-screen -- out there, out of reach and waiting to assume its rightful place in Daniel's life. Will it? You assume so, hope so, but there's also that nagging question of his innocence. The title certainly indicates a wrong will be set right at the end of six episodes, though McKinnon smartly keeps that final answer just off-screen, too. This animates the core mystery of who really committed the crime and why Daniel confessed in the first place. Believe me, you'll want to know. At least I do.
No spoilers from 'Rectify' creator
"Rectify" creator Ray McKinnon, who is also an actor (he played Lincoln "Linc" Potter on "Sons of Anarchy"), refuses to say whether his show will eventually reveal whether its central character, former prisoner Daniel Holden, was guilty of the crime he was convicted of, although his response to a question on the matter hinted at an answer.
"Why do we wrongly convict people? A lot of times, we want order over justice or the illusion of order, and that was one of the things that intrigued me about this story," McKinnon said during a January news conference for TV critics in Pasadena, Calif. "We want to have closure as human beings, and in our storytelling, we want to have closure. I'm not so sure I want to abide by those conventions.
"The more interesting part of the story was not who did it, but how does a man re-acclimate himself back to this world when he's been in a box for 19 years, more than half of his life?" he continued. "How does a family reinvent themselves when this person literally or figuratively comes back from the dead? A lot of this story is about the human dynamics between the family and Daniel and between (the family and) the town, as opposed to a whodunit."
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