SummarySeeking the killer of his wife, ex-Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) goes west and soon finds himself at Hell on Wheels, the temporary town that followed the construction of the transcontinental railroad as it moved westward.
SummarySeeking the killer of his wife, ex-Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount) goes west and soon finds himself at Hell on Wheels, the temporary town that followed the construction of the transcontinental railroad as it moved westward.
It's a measure of how absorbing Hell on Wheels is that each of these characters has evolved into someone we know and, in varying degrees,m root for. [10 Aug 2012, p.65]
Where is this headed? Who knows? But it's heading there slowly. Nevertheless, the cast--Common, Meaney, Heyerdahl and Mount--is good, while the Old West still feels especially beautiful and perilous.
The second season of this Western finds it marginally better paced and the characters moderated a bit from the broad archetypes seen in Season 1, but I still find little to compel me in the story of a robber baron and an ex-soldier teaming up to get a transcontinental railroad built.
Dramatically, the show feels as stalled as the trains, which have nowhere to go. Studiously gritty but rarely convincing in its clichéd characterizations and pretentious posturing, Wheels is hell on one's endurance.