Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Pulp factions.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 25, 2016

There’s a moment fairly early on in Brooklyn where young Irish lass Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) is struggling with her decision to emigrate to the United States. Waylaid by seasickness and overcome with a general sense of angst due to this life changing turn of events, she’s counseled by a somewhat older and wiser Irish woman who is her roommate on the ship traversing the Atlantic. That woman tells Eilis she really ought to be glad she’s moving away from a small village where everyone knows her business, an aspect to the transition Eilis probably hadn’t considered yet. It’s a salient observation, and one that occurred to me as I watched Banshee: The Complete Third Season. If you wanted to “disappear” into the woodwork, would it be smarter to do so in an urban metropolis where you’d be surrounded by thousands, maybe even millions, of other people? Or would it be a better choice to go to some out of the way hole in the wall that no one has ever heard of, but where longstanding ties between residents mean that everyone does indeed know everything about everyone else? The choice seems obvious to me, but Banshee takes the perhaps illogical route of plopping an interloper down into the roiling environment of a small town, and ups the ante by having the guy assume the identity of a new sheriff. While most of the townsfolk of Banshee think this newcomer is Sheriff Lucas Hood (Antony Starr), in reality he’s an ex-con who has assumed the sheriff’s identity after the real sheriff (who had not yet made it to Banshee) died in a fracas. The newly minted Hood (the irony of the surname shouldn’t be lost on anyone) actually has a reason to want to be in Banshee, one element that perhaps helps to ameliorate the precipitous logic of the series’ basic setup, and that’s because he’s searching for his long ago partner (in every sense of the word) Anastasia (Ivana Milicevic). Banshee evidently must be full of extremely gullible folks, for it turns out Ana herself has assumed a new identity, reinventing herself as Carrie Hopewell (again with the surnames), a now supposedly happily married wife and mother whose husband Gordon (Rus Blackwell) just happens to be Banshee’s District Attorney. One of the commentaries included on this new Blu-ray set freely admits that this series traffics in so-called “heightened realism”, and with an understanding that Banshee is going to offer a florid and often hyperbolic account of its almost insanely interlinked characters may help some viewers to be able to withstand a perhaps undue reliance on suspension of disbelief. Banshee is also notable for its near Game of Thrones levels of sex and violence, two other elements which may in fact recommend the show to certain segments of the populace.

For those wanting to catch up on the story thus far, Ken Brown's reviews of the two previous seasons can be found here:

Banshee: The Complete First Season Blu-ray review

Banshee: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray review

Ken’s reviews were open about his somewhat bifurcated response to the show, one which I share as I take over reviewing duties for the series, and one which is perhaps even more pronounced in me than it was in him (so lovers of the series are forewarned and hopefully forearmed). Aside from the often lunatic plot histrionics and patently cartoon like situations that often accrue, the frequent indulgences in gut churning violence and titillatingly explicit sex scenes often had me reacting with a capitulating, “Well, that just happened.” The moral shades of gray this show exploits were in evidence from the get go in this third season as three of Banshee’s “finest” take matters into their own hands (and/or guns) with regard to at least one of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of various bad guy types who are drawn to Banshee like moths to a flame. In fact, the glut of villains in this show is truly amazing, including town kingpin Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen), various local Native Americans (who might be thought of as at least relatively decent, considering the landscape), the Amish (yes, the Amish, just in case you thought Discovery’s Amish Mafia was a lark) and neo-Nazis. But wait, you also get—just in case you tend to think military types are born heroes, there’s nefarious Colonel Stowe (Langley Kirkwood), a hardassed Marine whose shenanigans start to figure into the plot more and more and which result in this season’s final climactic showdown. Wow (which is shorthand for “Well, that just happened”).

The series tends to careen along at such an amped up level that it may appear that character development is taking a back seat to the sheer momentum of so many people working at such odds in such an off the wall atmosphere. Banshee’s writers perhaps are attuned to that perception, for they do pause the onslaught from time to time to offer brief descriptors, even in the form of flashbacks, that are obviously designed to illuminate the often shady motives of these folks. Therefore, this season gives a little more info on the interesting relationship between Lucas and Job (Hoon Lee), as well as some backstory for Lucas himself that almost seems to have been ripped (no pun intended) from Saw: The Complete Movie Collection, at least to begin with. But these often seem like strategies instead of organically unfolding moments, something that may tend to undercut their intended purpose.

Perhaps surprisingly, then, a few emotional beats do accrue this season. One involving Carrie and Gordon is brief in and of itself, but is built out of the previous two seasons’ roiling dysfunctions in the Hopewell family life. This particular subplot would seem to clear the way for an easier path forward for Carrie and Lucas, while the show, never content to leave well enough alone (a tendency I perhaps cheekily refer to as Downton Abbey Syndrome), introduces a whole new trauma for Job which will no doubt take center stage as the fourth season starts up.

There is so much going on throughout this third season that a brief précis is all but impossible, but a couple of observations may help to make the patent absurdity (not a knock, just a comment) of much of Banshee a little clearer to those who haven’t yet experienced its over the top ambience. In that long list of villains laid out above, neo-Nazis were referenced. Well, guess what? Banshee’s police department ends up with one of them in uniform this season, replete with a swastika tattoo adorning his cheek. “Heightened reality”, anyone? And a final little “twist” seems to put the kibosh on one of the central artifices of the entire series, leaving Banshee fans to wonder what exactly the creative staff has in store for Lucas next season. Whatever that may be, chances are many will be reacting with a hearty “Well, that just happened.”

Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Banshee: The Complete Third Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO and Cinemax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This third season continues in the largely stellar footsteps of the first two years, though this year's prevalence of dark and even dingy scenes means that slight dustings of noise might be incrementally more noticeable. Otherwise, though, this is a fantastic looking presentation, one which segues between almost garishly lit scenes (sometimes with pushed contrast leading to near blooming) and dank, almost completely devoid of light, offerings where detail is understandably minimized. The series tends to delight in various stylized offerings like color grading and some quasi-hallucinatory effects, but detail levels remain uniformly high, especially in some close-ups (take a look at screenshot 15 for an example). Contrast and black levels are both solid and consistent, and the entire series offers routinely excellent sharpness and clarity levels.

Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Things go boom (or crunch, or smash) with some ubiquity throughout Banshee, an aspect which makes the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track a lot of fun to listen to. Audiophiles who love floorboard rattling LFE will get several potent examples of that throughout the season, along with other nicely immersive touches in several big action set pieces. There are some great panning effects when various vehicles zoom in and out of the frame, and some bone shattering hand to hand combat scenes also offer a glut of discretely placed effects. Dialogue doesn't suffer in the mix at any point, always retaining primary prioritization. Several pulsing music cues also fill the side and rear channels quite convincingly. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range extremely wide throughout this season.

Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Banshee Origins (1080p; 24:25) is a set of eight "transmedia" vignettes documenting various backstories (or as HBO terms it, "the story before the story"), and serves as a good overview for those not yet acquainted with the ins and outs of this convoluted tale, or for those wanting to delve a little deeper into various characters.


• Banshee Origins Saga (1080i; 54:33) features an optional commentary with Greg Yaitanes (Executive Producer/Director) Allen Marshall Palmer (Post-Production Producer).


• Making of the Episode 2 Title Sequence (1080p; 1:49)


• Zoomed In (1080i; 3:41) offers brief EPKs for both episodes on this disc.


• Episode 2 Deleted Scene (1080p; 00:28)


• Audio Commentary on Episode 1 The Fire Trials with Jonathan Tropper (Creator/Executive Producer/Writer) Greg Yaitanes (Executive Producer/Director)

Disc Two

• Burton vs. Nola Stunts (1080p; 3:49)


• Burton vs. Nola Camera Movement (1080p; 00:53) is a brief but interesting animatic showing how the camera captured the sequence, with a PiP window showing the sequence.


• Zoomed In (1080i; 6:51) covers the three episodes on this disc.


• Audio Commentaries:

  Episode 3 A Fixer of Sorts with Magnus Martens (Director) and Marcus Young (Stunt Coordinator)

  Episode 5 Tribal with OC Madsen (Director) and Allen Marshall Palmer (Post-Production Producer)

Disc Three

• The Heist (1080p; 20:10) is a pretty cool supplement that allows the viewer to select any of several camera perspectives that caught this impressive sequence.


• Zoomed In (1080i; 6:51) covers the three episodes on this disc.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:11)


• Audio Commentary on Episode 7 You Can't Hide From the Dead with Greg Yaitanes (Executive Producer/Director), John Valerio (Editor) and Patia Prouty (Costume Designer)

Disc Four

• Genoa Rehearsal (1080p; 4:50)


• Episode 10 - Zoomed In (1080i; 2:22)


• Episode 9 - Deleted Scene (1080p; 1:44)


• Sins Promo (1080i; 1:11)


• Audio Commentary on Episode 10 We All Pay Eventually with Jonathan Tropper (Creator/Executive Producer/Writer) Loni Peristere (Co-Executive Producer/Director) and Adam Targum (Co-Executive Producer/Writer)

Banshee: The Complete Third Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I had a kind of odd thought as I neared the end of Banshee's third season, musing to myself that had Hunter S. Thompson ever deigned to write a cable television series, it very well could have been something like this. Banshee is just flat out gonzo (if I may be permitted to purloin a term) most of the time, and it simply needs to be surrendered to on its own terms. It's a visceral, at times patently bizarre, ride, but like most roller coasters, you'll feel a little breathless when it's all said and done. Technical merits continue to be strong, the supplemental package is quite bounteous and varied, and Banshee: The Complete Third Season comes Recommended.