Where the absurd meets crime

BASED on a 2009 novel by Dennis Tafoya, Dope Thief follows two lifelong friends who pose as Drug Enforcement Administration agents to rob corner boys and trap houses.

- CHRIS KELLY

However, Ray (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Wagner Moura) are not folk heroes like the stickup man Omar from The Wire.

They're just screwups. A pilot directed by Ridley Scott sets the scene with the same tools the filmmaker used in his shades-of-grey conman yarn Matchstick Men and his gritty drug-world epics American Gangster and The Counselor.

Black-and-white flashbacks show glimpses of lonely birthdays, jailhouse assaults and high school dalliances that stand in for backstory.

A handheld looseness gives room for Ray and Manny to trade B.S. and bluster in the lowlife milieu that creator and showrunner Peter Craig mined in The Town, the Bahston-set Ben Affleck film he co-wrote.

In the two episodes of Dope Thief made available to critics, Henry draws from the bottomless, world-weary range he’s shown off in projects as different as Atlanta and If Beale Street Could Talk.