Justified (2010)

There are a lot of coded reviews about this...mostly based on politics. And, unfortunately, it's the worst kind. The despise all things remotely rural for intelligentsia snobbery politics kind. In other words, you break down a lot of the negative reviews, and most of them really tend to be based around the fact that it takes place in Kentucky and tells the story of people living in the country. Moving past that it's Elmore Leonard and stories don't get much cooler than him. Plus it's the merging of Elmore Leonards famed westerns with Elmore Leonards famed crime novels and...if you can't love that you really have no heart. or at least no love for fine pulp literature. And then there are complaints that it's based in Kentucky and Obviously shot in California. There's no excuse for that. It's as Kentucky as the first Halloween was Illinois. They should have filmed in Georgia like everyone else is these days and gotten the scenery a little closer to legit. Beyond that, in typical Elmore Leonard fashion, the characters are all great and pull off amusing and ominous at the same time. And the actors are talented enough to reinforce the prototypical Leonard characters. The entire run pulls off Leonard's ability to twist and turn character arcs into unlikely alliances, have ominous and malicious villains that are an entertaining and humorous pleasure to watch, and heroes that can walk the line between vice and virtue like alcoholic on a bender and still come out with something resembling a moral compass. In other words, it's an Elmore Leonard show, you're going to be entertained despite its faults.