DMZ review: HBO Max’s Vertigo Comics adaptation leaves too much unsaid

DMZ bears the unfortunate distinction of suffering from one of the most severe pandemic disruptions on a show that’s made it to air. The original series had been planned for HBO Max as an actual ongoing series. After filming the pilot in March 2020, the series was stopped production. It resumed production late in 2021 as a 4-episode miniseries. Roberto Patino said that this led to the series’ current status. DMZBeing a more intimate, personal story. Under these constraints, it’s miraculous that DMZWith a clear, cohesive story to share, has arrived. It’s just not a particularly satisfying one.

This text was loosely taken from Vertigo Comic by Brian Wood and Riccardo Buchielli. DMZ follows Alma “Zee” Ortega (Rosario Dawson), a medic in a New York City fractured by a second American civil war. In this alternate near-future, the country is divided into the Free States of America and what’s left of the United States, with Manhattan declared a “Demilitarized Zone” — effectively a no man’s land abandoned by both governments, where those who could evacuate left and those who could not are forced (or choose) to fend for themselves.

Nearly a decade ago, on Evacuation Day — when Manhattan became the DMZ and many residents tried to flee the city — Alma was separated from her son on her way out, losing him in the DMZ as she made it to safety. In the intervening years, she’s been looking for him everywhere, and the series immediately begins with her learning from a reliable source that he may still be in the DMZ, and thus goes on the perilous journey to find him.

Richard DuCree/HBO Max

DMZ establishes both its status quo and Alma’s motivations quickly and poorly. It will take viewers a while to get a sense of what happened to America and why Manhattan was declared demilitarized. This series can be best understood in character-driven terms. Alma sets out to find her son and travels to the most dangerous places within the country. This is where Alma has uneasy past relationships.

Despite this focus on personal goals, DMZ’s four episodes aren’t enough to make Alma’s journey a satisfying one — the world around her is too rich to ignore. It’s the best part about DMZThe series, once it’s in progress, is more alive and full of life that many other genre shows. Life in the DMZ is dangerous but not despondent — it’s a community of black and brown New Yorkers banding together to make it through a difficult time, in spite of forces without and within that would rather have them subjugated in one way or another. This danger is personified by Paco Delgado (Benjamin Bratt), a charismatic gang leader in the vein of Roger Hill’s Cyrus from The Warriors, seeking to unite the DMZ’s various sets while also establishing himself as the recognized leader of the DMZ in the island’s first election.

Photo: Richard DuCree/HBO Max

Under sHowrunner Roberto Patino, DMZ is quietly transformed into a Latin American story, not just by virtue of casting Latinx talent, but by focusing on characters from Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood and Nuyorican culture. It’s a show that cares about howMusic and slang are the lifeblood of people. The rot and corruption that threatens that culture is poisonous can be heard in their music. This specificity is admirable — a Latinx genre show that doesn’t make a big deal of being about Latinidad! — but again: the rest of the DMZ is there, compelling and full of questions that are hard for the viewer to forget, with good reason. It was necessary. DMZ is the Alma Ortega show, but other, incoherent-but-compelling fragments regularly present themselves, tugging at what could have been.

Because DMZCould have been timely. This miniseries touches on dozens of current ideas. It depicts an America where Americans are violently tearing down their country in a time that seems almost all too possible. It presents a dystopia that’s about people building communities instead of indulging in cliché survivalist fantasy. It suggests that they are being interrogated about their need for law enforcement in the absence thereof. This is just a partial list. DMZhas so many opportunities to tell vital, compelling stories about people, focusing on those who are often forgotten or ignored in the popular narratives. The bones can be seen here. Each 10 minute, another chance is lost in the peripheral. Instead, DMZIt reflects the country that it represents: promising, but in chaos.