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Oz - The Complete Fourth Season

starring: Christopher Farmer
directed by: Gregory Dark

: Oz - The Complete Fourth Season
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780783127330
Format: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0783127332
Label: Hbo Home Video
Manufacturer: Hbo Home Video
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 01, 2005
Running Time: 960 minutes
Sales Rank: 7770
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: July 12, 1997



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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
(HBO Dramatic Series) The Millennium ended with a bang at Oswald State Correctional Facility Level Four--aka Emerald City--as racial tensions reached an all-time high. Now following a two-week lockdown and the appointment of a new Unit Manager things are definitely changing but not necessarily for the better. Prison officials are looking for ways to end the hostilities and return Emerald City to normal...but when was Em City ever normal? And if anyone thinks the worst is over for Oz they're wrong--dead wrong.Running Time: 960 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359901720 Manufacturer No: 99017

Amazon.com:
The heightened reality of Oz remains consistently engrossing in the fourth season of HBO's volatile prison drama. All 16 episodes were written or cowritten by series creator Tom Fontana, and are bookended by the wisely sardonic observations of paraplegic prisoner Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), whose terse, philosophical ruminations about life in 'Oz' give the series its literate edge. The 2000-2001 season finds Oz in the wake of racial warfare; tensions remain high among the factions that make the 'Em City' cell block a hotbed of seething animosity among the skinhead Aryans led by Shillinger (J.K. Simmons); Muslim splinter groups led by Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), the fearsome Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Supreme Allah (Lord Jamar); and the resident Mafia, Latinos, and lowlifes who make up Em City's embroiled population of newcomers, hard-timers, and death-row inmates. Unit Administrator McManus (Terry Kinney) sets up a centrally located penalty cage for anyone who causes outbreaks of violence (which are shockingly frequent and frequently lethal), but loses his job in a mid-season plot development that spins Oz into a maelstrom of internal politics and brutal retaliation.

Through it all, Fontana and his collaborators (including guest director Steve Buscemi) maintain impressive focus on dozens of finely drawn characters. Laced with homosexual tension, jealousies, religious fervor, and threats of betrayal, the season's most compelling conflicts involve impulsive killer Ryan O'Reily (played with cagey menace by Dean Winters) and his brain-damaged half-brother Cyril (Scott William Winters); and the manipulative Keller (Christopher Meloni) and his prison lover Toby Beecher (Lee Tergesen), a lawyer and convicted murderer whose survival seems perpetually uncertain. Tenuous order is barely maintained by warden Glynn (Ernie Hudson) and Catholic counselor 'Sister Pete' (Rita Moreno), but the bulk of Oz's fourth season is devoted to chaos, as shifting loyalties keep all prisoners (and all viewers) in a state of anxious anticipation. The criminal histories of many inmates are shown in flashback, and one death-row scenario (involving guest star Kathryn Erbe) reaches its inevitable conclusion. By the time episode 16 ends with a blazing inferno, you'll be wondering about the fate of Rev. Cloutier (Luke Perry) and anxious for the tumultuous events of season 5. (Commentary accompanies two episodes: Fontana and Moreno offer informative anecdotes on 'You Bet Your Life,' but the Fontana/Winters/Tergesen commentary on 'Famous Last Words' is raucously undisciplined and for hardcore Oz fans only.)--Jeff Shannon



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Ever-increasing level of drama.
This is a positive review, but first I feel obligated to warn potential viewers of just how bloody ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Season 4 is Oz at its Best
To most fans of HBO's Oz, season four is split up into two parts. Why the creators decided to make ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - It just goes to show that even the best have bad moments...
Until a few months ago I had never even heard of Oz. My boyfriend brought home the complete first ... Read More


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Oz goes off the rails, but in a good way
Coming off the nearly unmitigated brilliance of its third season, season four of Oz sees the show facing ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Excellent
Oz was and still is one of my favorite movies of what really shows what goes on in the prisons today.

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Copyright ©2003, Mark Carey.