‘American Gigolo’ Episode 1 Recap: The Hustler

There’s no point in asking, you’ll get no reply: Paul Schrader’s 1980 neo-noir American Gigolo is one of the great works of pretty vacant cinema. Viewed in 2022, much of its stylish brio — aside from Blondie and Giorgio Moroder’s still amazing theme song “Call Me” — falls flat, neutered by Schader’s admittedly deliberately antiseptic direction. (The sex scene between stars Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton, two of the sexiest people on earth, is perhaps the least sexy sex scene to ever sex.) Apples-to-apples comparisons with Michael Mann’s Manhunter, William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A., even Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat are…unflattering. 

Still, there’s a weird magnetic magic in Gere’s performance as a high-end hustler who finds himself caught up in a murder mystery that only barely touches upon him, until it becomes clear he has no alibi and is getting railroaded. He’s so detached from the event that he half-convinces himself—and the audience—that he actually did it, despite the complete and total lack of legitimate evidence and motive. It makes for a fascinating study in ambiguity, if not a fascinating film as a whole.

There’s nothing so ineffable going on in Ray Donovan impresario David Hollander’s TV-series adaptation of Schrader’s original. Jon Bernthal, arguably the greatest exemplar of 21st-century wounded American masculinity—give or take his regrettable role in Shia LaBeouf’s hideous redemption tour—stars as Julian Kaye, a high-class escort who’s done 15 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. When he’s exonerated thanks to a deathbed confession by the real killer, news delivered to him by the same Detective Sunday (Rosie O’Donnell, an absolute blast) who effectively coerced him into confessing, he steps back out into the streets and makes a whirlwind tour of people and places that were once important to him.

He visits his mother, Maryanne (Melora Walters), still living in the same trailer park where she willingly pimped him as a teen out to her neighbor. He visits Lorenzo (Wayne Brady!), an ex-escort turned pimp who was once one of his best friends and who offers him a couch to crash on. He visits Michelle Stratton (Gretchen Mol!), wife of tech baron Richard Stratton (Leland Orser) and his own legit ex-girlfriend, whose early-teenage son has run away with the thirtysomething schoolteacher who’s been molesting him. Finally courtesy of Lorenzo, he visits Olga (Better Call Saul’s Sandrine Holt), the madam who bought him from his mother when he was a teenager (played by Gabriel LaBelle), only to find her wheelchair-bound and barely able to speak. (Julian is trying to determine if Olga, nicknamed “The Queen,” is the mysterious “Keane” that the dying murderer told Sunday had hired him for the killing.) Olga’s niece Isabelle (Lizzie Brocheré), whom Julian knew as a child, is now in charge, and she forces him to fuck her in order to prove his mettle as an escort once again. (Her slaps and growls are one of the episode’s few moments of real heat.)

And that, in essence, is the plot in its entirety! The episode’s primary driver, as you might have guessed from this brief summary, is not plot at all, but character-based ambiance, specifically emanating from Jon Bernthal. I’ve had the pleasure of covering his work in The Punisher and We Own This City for this website, and I’m not ashamed to say I simply can’t get enough of the guy. The thrill of watching Jon Bernthal work out in prison, drive a car on the freeway, languorously recline in bed, walk around in expensive-looking clothing, run his hands through his floppy hair, et cetera and ad nauseam, cannot be overstated. There’s just something about his dark brown eyes, his prizefighter face, his overall physical swagger that can’t be imitated or duplicated. You either have it or you don’t.

Of course, the same could no doubt be said about Richard Gere, who originated the role of Julian in Paul Schrader’s original film. (Reports that this show functions as a timeframe-adjusted sequel to the movie are greatly exaggerated; there’s simply no way to reconcile the events of that movie, in which Julian dodges a murder rap at the last minute thanks to the grace afforded him by the woman who loves him, with the events of this show, in which he does 15 years hard time.) Gere, who in retrospect looks like a sort of Bernthal/David Duchovny prototype, portrayed Julian as a beautiful nullity, a sort of sexual idiot savant whose polyglottism and knowledge of fashion, food, cars, stereos, art, and so on functioned solely as a means to woo older, wealthier women. The movie’s big tell is that Gere’s Julian had an apartment full of framed paintings and photographs simply stacked against the walls, not hung on them; he knew what constituted Good Art in the eyes of his milieu, but he didn’t care enough to actually enjoy it, since enjoying it wasn’t his job. 

It’s hard to imagine Bernthal’s Julian — real name Johnny Henderson — doing something similar. Oh sure, future episodes may prove me wrong. But based on what we see here, from his early days as an abused teen to his whirlwind life as a pro (most of his clients seem like beautiful young women , despite Detective Sunday’s claim that he more or less exclusively saw women her age) to his life in the can to his freedom afterwards, this is a far more soulful Julian Kaye than what Gere had on offer. Gere’s Julian barely reacted to his murder frame-up except in a combination of surprise and petulance; Bernthal’s Julian cries like a baby. Gere’s Julian had one point of passion and one only: He was fervently dedicated to the cause of pleasuring older woman, which he found both challenging and, in the event of his success, a bonafide achievement in an otherwise empty field and life. 

It’s not yet clear what motivated Bernthal’s Julian aside from an escape from his life of poverty and abuse, but he just reads as less resolutely classy than Gere did, and thus is more open to emotion. Schrader has never made any bones about the way his movie’s ending granted Julian completely undeserved emotional grace; it’s impossible to imagine anyone watching Bernthal sobbing his way through the opening sequence, in which he’s confronted by the reality of his alleged crime, and not hoping he’s afforded the same spiritual and moral largesse by the filmmakers.

So we’ll see where the rest of this season’s episodes take us. I get why critics have gotten their backs up about the open pathos Hollander and Bernthal have injected into the character of Julian, previously a void—but hey, we’re not all Nicolas Winding Refn and Miles Teller in Too Old to Die Young, and not everyone can make a void work as a leading man. Perhaps it’s better, in this case, to try for something emotional, even if it’s going to fail in the end.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.