Before
the celebrated Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn won the Best Director
Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for his quintessential action
thriller Drive, the filmmaker had a
few bumps in the road to critical acclaim and commercial success. After his 2003 English-language debut Fear X tanked and bankrupted his
production company Jang Go Star, Mr.
Refn was forced to take any job he could get to rebuild his assets.
Among
the projects made during this brief rebound period were two sequels to his 1996
crime drama Pusher and a very brief
stint in ITV British television with his 2007 episode of the hit series Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Directing Downton
Abbey and The Guest star Dan
Stevens in an episode titled Nemesis,
Refn described the experience and finished product as ‘extremely degrading’ and
is commonly looked upon as the one effort that shows off the least number of
directorial stylistic flourishes Mr. Refn has since become known for.
Shortly
thereafter Refn made Bronson and
quickly rebuilt his career in feature filmmaking before receiving international
stardom with Drive and cemented his
signature aesthetic with his 2016 Los Angeles set fashion industry thriller The Neon Demon. Released theatrically by the now defunct
Broad Green Pictures and Amazon Studios, the picture did meager business but
has since amassed a cult following and introduced Mr. Refn to the financiers of
what would ultimately become his next project which included a unique
proposition: return to television.
Teaming
up with comic book writer and cartoonist Ed Brubaker, the project commissioned
by Amazon entitled Too Old to Die Young
brings the writer-director back to his favorite Neo-Noir setting of Los
Angeles, California for his penchant for neon-lit nightclubs and shadowy
ultraviolent criminal underworlds. In
the early stages of pre-production, Too
Old to Die Young appeared to be shaping up to be Refn’s next feature when a
most unusual development occurred: it would be a miniseries running roughly
thirteen hours broken up into ten episodes running about an hour and a half
each.
Coming
on the heels of auteur-driven television with a singular creative visionary
helming the whole thing such as Twin
Peaks: The Return and recently Chernobyl,
each episode of Too Old to Die Young was
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn with the opening credit #byNWR greeting
viewers soon as the show starts. Further
still, contrary to the weekly airing of new episodes, all ten episodes of Too Old to Die Young aired on Amazon
Instant Video at the same time, allowing ample room for binge watching or
however you prefer to digest the series.
Despite
airing on the small screen, Refn has gone on the record saying he doesn’t
consider Too Old to Die Young a
miniseries, instead suggesting the project is a longform movie broken up into
chapters but that’s open to debate. Even
more unusual is how the director went on to promote the series at Cannes in
2019, presenting episodes four and five theatrically rather than the start of
the show. Now that we have got the
basics out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the first episode of the
Danish writer-director’s first true foray from the big screen to the small
screen without compromising his cinematic vision or adhering to the demands of
running time for theatrical exhibition.
Episode 1: The Devil
Opening
on a night like any other, we find Detective Martin Jones (Miles Teller
channeling Ryan Gosling’s stoic driver) with his partner Larry (Lance Gross)
prowling the streets of Los Angeles.
These are bad cops with Martin’s relationship with seventeen-year-old
high schooler Janey (Nell Tiger Free) and Larry’s musings about wanting to
murder a prostitute he regularly sees so his wife doesn’t find out giving
viewers ample reasons to abandon the show outright.
This
same night, a Mexican assassin named Jesus (Augusto Aguilera playing a fallen
angel?) casually walks up to Larry before putting a bullet into his head. As it turns out, Larry doubled as an assassin
for Nigerian crime boss Damian (Babs Olusanmokun) and wants his surviving
partner Martin to take his place, setting in motion a labyrinthine crime saga
spanning LA and Mexico including but not limited to Yakuzas, the Russian mob
and the Mexican cartel.
From
the outset, the chilly expressionless performances by Teller and Gross amid
extended long takes with elongated pauses between the sparse exchanges of
dialogue and the way with which we’re dropped in the middle of this saga
without a point of reference will no doubt remind Refn fans of his still
polarizing Only God Forgives. It’s a stylistic choice Refn has become fond
of but newcomers to his work and television media consumers will find his
approach trying. That we’re also presented
with outwardly reprehensible characters we can’t latch onto or identify with
also makes Refn’s uncompromising journey into darkness a bit of a challenge to
engage in.
That
said, as expected Refn and Se7en cinematographer
Darius Khondji whip up quite a visual feast of neon fluorescent colors,
symmetrical framing, graceful pans and tracking shots, illuminating the seedy
criminal underworld permeating Los Angeles.
As always Refn’s right hand soundman Cliff Martinez provides a pulsating
electronic score though there are times when it sounds a bit like a collection
of unused cues from The Neon Demon.
Despite
the leisurely pacing and near total void of human warmth, one of the great
things about the first installment is how you are left to decide whether or not
you want to continue down this long and (no pun intended) winding road. Where most shows present a particular narrative
hook to lure you into the next episode, the pilot for Refn’s show is
deliberately bereft of such a cliffhanger.
In other words, you’re really not sure where this is gonna go and aren’t
left with much reason to continue other than personal investment, which is a
rare and oddly beautiful thing for film and television in any form.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki