Nelson Van Alden / George Mueller

A federal Prohibition agent in Atlantic City, Nelson Van Alden is a rigid, God-fearing zealot who sees himself as an instrument of righteous punishment against the bootleggers around him. He prays with unsettling intensity, sweats through his suits, and enforces the law with a fervor that seems to come from somewhere deeper and darker than duty.

Michael Shannon plays repression like a slow leak, letting Van Alden's piety curdle into something stranger scene by scene without ever tipping his hand. The writing gives him absolute certainty in his own righteousness, and Shannon's stillness — those unblinking eyes, that flat Midwestern cadence — makes every crack in the facade feel seismic.