If
you thought the first episode of Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn’s full
blown foray into television was an alienating, challengingly slow burn watching
Miles Teller’s antiheroic detective gradually involve himself in organized crime
as a hitman unfold at a snail’s pace, then the writer-director’s second
installment only proceeds to pump the brakes harder. Leaving the United States and our main
character behind for ninety minutes, Too
Old to Die Young jumps into a Mexican crime empire with the assassin of the
first episode, Jesus (Augusto Aguilera).
In
a near silent, extended crawl on the hands and knees, episode two entitled The Lovers chronicles the Mexican
assassin’s visit to his crime-boss uncle at a key moment when an all-out war
between the police and cartel stands to erupt.
Amid a shaky relationship between his uncle’s girlfriend Yaritza (Cristina
Rodlo) and bad apple son Miguel (Roberto Aguire), The Lovers touches on a cacophony of aberrant criminal behaviors including
but not limited to incest, sex trafficking and hard drug abuse.
Punctuated
by stretched, lengthy pauses between dialogue with numerous long takes of
camera pans unbroken for several minutes at a time, the second installment of Too Old to Die Young intends to test your
patience and commitment to the show. Nary
a single line of dialogue in this episode isn’t in Spanish with some sequences
in montage designed so we don’t hear the characters speaking over Cliff
Martinez’s pulsating score. It also peels
back further layers of ugliness than the previous episode though in the time-honored
tradition of the writer-director, much of the worst atrocities contained in the
world of Refn’s show are more heavily implied over being explicitly shown.
As
aforementioned, composer Martinez flexes his creative muscles more than ever
here with his electronic music leaning heavily towards a theremin sound fit for
a ‘50s creature feature with the camera pointed at very real monsters in the
act of committing violence. Also new to
Martinez’s soundscape is the incorporation of vocals into the music, creating a
sense of grandiosity about the proceedings.
Visually the show comes alive at night and within the neon-lit multicolored
cool of nightclubs and bars though the wide vistas of a barren Mexican desert
landscape add to the second episode’s overall chilliness and distancing impact.
Uncompromising
and boundary pushing for television, crime drama and cinema in general, the
second episode all but seeks to weed out any and all casual followers with only
room left for die-hards to roam around.
It’s a tough gamble for the first two episodes of the new Amazon Studios
show to be this distancing between the auteur and the viewer but make no
mistake, this isn’t merely the Danish filmmaker navel-gazing.
By abruptly leaping from American soil to Mexico,
quickly Too Old to Die Young establishes
a vastness in scope, spanning further than just one setting with numerous
warring criminal lineages sharpening their bayonets. It also builds anticipation towards an
impending battle of cops and robbers far bloodier and deadlier than anything
previously seen in the Valhalla Rising and
Drive director’s oeuvre.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki