As
if the journey down Danish writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn’s wild and
unpredictable rabbit hole tinged with intoxicating surrealism spiced with bouts
of extreme violence couldn’t get any more unusual, Refn offers up one final
surprise by doing the opposite of the clichéd ‘series finale’. Whereas the last episode tends to be a
sprawling and eventful two-hour+ endeavor with many momentous developments
saved for the last, Episode 10: The World
of the Amazon Studios’ produced Los Angeles crime saga Too Old to Die Young runs a mere thirty minutes and plays like a
bonus epilogue rather than a tidy resolution while also bringing the mayhem
unleashed in the filmmaker’s television series back together full circle in its
own quiet manner.
Following
up one last time with Diana (Jena Malone) opening the title credits on her psychic/godmother
(how do I put this modestly) pleasuring herself donning VR goggles before
breaking into a full dance number set to Goldfrapp’s Ooh La La. But not before
she delivers an extended monologue summing up the viewer’s collective feelings
about the injustices having taken place on the show as well as timely lamenting
our country’s current modern political climate.
Think of the political commentary peppered throughout Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly handled deftly
rather than obviously. As abruptly as
we’re briefly dropped into Diana’s hemisphere, we’re taken back out for one
final open-ended farewell from the show’s obvious heroine, Yaritza (Cristina
Rodlo) which achieves that rare balance of ending in near silence as well as a
noisy bang.
Playing
like an extended standalone coda to the events of the series, Too Old to Die Young much like the often
compared to Twin Peaks: The Return deliberately
ends unresolved with a glimmer of hope while declaring the show could go
anywhere and everywhere at this stage of the game. At the end of an elongated, hard and brutal
odyssey, alas Too Old to Die Young as
it stands is a remarkably dense and uncompromising cinematic achievement made
possible through the advent (and upper hand I should add) of the small screen
versus the theater screen. Though Refn
did present two of the episodes theatrically at the Cannes Film Festival, Too Old to Die Young could not exist
anywhere but in the long form television medium.
This
was not the easiest adventure for this seasoned Refn fan to embark on, less for
the show’s still shocking and even outlandish turns than the amount of time
spent wallowing deep inside Refn’s netherworld of his and co-writer Ed
Brubaker’s creating. There are scenes of
pure cinema which play like their own abstractions, transitions which tread a
fine line between artistic breakthrough and self-indulgence, and above all a
complete and utter disregard for an audience.
In other words, if Too Old to Die
Young is too violent, weird and drawn out for you, tough shit. That
much of the odyssey is so loosely tethered and the provocations do manage to
burrow and even disturb, those who are willing to stick around and dive further
within are only going to emerge scathed with cuts and bruises.
And
yet, however, with all of that said, Too
Old to Die Young compared to numerous other films and television programs
that have come and gone so far this year has managed to elicit the biggest
emotional reaction from me and easily left the strongest of unshakable
impressions on me. Having followed this
writer-director for years, I was ready and I wasn’t. I knew the terrain but did not know just far
this was gonna go. That Refn was given
the opportunity to make something of this magnitude with this much experimentation
while exploring more deeply many themes that have been kicking around in his
prior works for years is a cause for celebration!
Make
no mistake, Too Old to Die Young is
really not for everyone. It is
hypnotically horrific, unconcerned for whatever viewership it acquires and
finally ends on something of an incongruent note. That said, soon as it was over with, all I
could think about was taking the psychedelic and wild roller coaster ride all
over again!
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki