Sylvester Stallone practically goes to Mars in Tulsa King, a Taylor Sheridan-created series that puts the man who played Rocky Balboa into the heartland. He’s drinking out of tiny cups in Oklahoma while the camera also pans past the famed Golden Driller statue, and it’s not as though he’s Doctor Manhattan in HBO’s Watchmen, but you catch my drift. Stallone plays the “original gangster,” as this trailer puts it, and we get to see him pull a “nice little place you got here”-type of barge-in within the most unlikely of settings.
His character, known in the mafia world as “The General,” decides to wreak havoc in a marijuana dispensary while suggesting that they’re in need of protection from gangs and the law. It’s great fun, given that The General’s been in prison for 25 years and is a bit of a time capsule. Hopefully, Stallone enjoyed these sorts of scenes (even while enduring blazing hell this past summer), and he’s tossing out all kinds of 1980s-style one liners, as a 1980s action star tends to do. Good stuff so far. From the Paramount+ synopsis:
TULSA KING follows New York mafia capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi, just after he is released from prison after 25 years and unceremoniously exiled by his boss to set up shop in Tulsa, Okla. Realizing that his mob family may not have his best interests in mind, Dwight slowly builds a “crew” from a group of unlikely characters, to help him establish a new criminal empire in a place that to him might as well be another planet.
Tulsa King premieres on November 13 and also stars Vincent Piazza, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Max Casella, and Garrett Hedlund.