Critical Condition: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story | SoHo, 9.30 Thursday

➢ “Stylish and vivid, violent and colorful, the newest installment of FX’s American Crime Story anthology series is not a courtroom drama like 2016’s The People v. O.J. Simpson. Nor is it really the story of the death of Gianni Versace, the famed fashion designer who was shot dead on the steps of his Miami Beach villa in 1997. Instead, the nine-episode series .. is the story of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who claimed Versace as his fifth and final victim.” — USA Today.

➢ “From the moment of Versace’s murder, The Assassination of Gianni Versace spools not forward but backward. In a brilliant device imperfectly rendered, every new episode of the show happens chronologically before the previous, in a Memento-style telling that is chasing some essential truth about its shapeshifting, mysterious killer.” — Variety.

➢ “Adapted from Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors by London Spy creator Tom Rob Smith, Assassination of Gianni Versace juggles three storylines and an innovative crimes-in-reverse structure in a way that yields a disturbing character study and an assortment of strong performances.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ “At some point we’ll all have to grapple with the idea that the warped compassion of the modern true-crime boom implicates its audience and that viewers are greedily lining up to be part of a lurid long tail of suffering and despair. If The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story were a little more interesting, maybe it would be that lightning rod. But instead it’s a surprisingly inert, if lushly imagined, tale.” — New York Times.

➢ “The show, cribbing from recent-enough history to build a narrative of increasingly high dudgeon, is rigorous about its devotion to aesthetic and to its big ideas about culture and society. Along with the new movie I, Tonya, it’s among a recent wave of entertainment that repurposes the half-forgotten scandals of the 1990s into morally righteous art … Their true stories, messy and unresolved, still have the quality of the most meaningfully provocative of art.” — Time.