Butler's Cinema Scene

Miles Teller

I’m not sure I like Amazon Prime’s “Too Old to Die Young,” but I’m damned if I can stop watching it.

Of course, you could say that about any effort from the supremely downbeat Nichoas Winding Refn.

Over the last 20 years Refn has gone from nihilistic Danish productions like the “Pusher” series, “Bronson” (Tom Hardy) and “Valhalla Rising” (Mads Mikkelsen)  to nihilistic American productions like “Drive” (Ryan Gosling) and  the much-despised “Only God Forgives” (Gosling again), with a sidestep into nihilistic pop culture in “The Neon Demon” (Elle Fanning).

Note the recurring word “nihilistic.” Get used to it.

“Too Old…” is Refn on steroids, a 10-part crime drama (each episode is about 90 minutes) that takes all the things people love (and hate) about his  oeuvre and pumps them up to the exploding point (though it rarely explodes; mostly it simmers).

Augusto Aguilera, Cristina Rodlo

Our protagonist (hero is way too strong a word) is Martin Jones (Miles Teller), a deputy with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.  Martin is, to put it bluntly, corrupt (but then so is just about every law enforcement officer depicted here).  He has a side job as an an enforcer/assassin for a Jamaican gang. Also, he’s dating a high-school senior, Janey  (Nell Tiger Free), whose creepy billionaire  father (William Baldwin in a career-high perf) can barely communicate through a bad case of the cocaine sniffles.

Martin’s nemesis is Jesus (Augusto Aguilera), the son of a beautiful cartel queen Martin assassinated before the series begins. The entire second episode is devoted to Jesus’ sojourn with his mother’s family in Mexico, where he gets steeped in the clan’s culture. He returns to the U.S. with his new wife (and adopted sister/cousin) Yaritza (Critina Rodlo), who claims to be a powerful witch. Naturally they’re sworn to exact revenge on Martin.

In the fourth or fifth episode we’re introduced to Viggo (John Hawkes), a terminally ill former FBI agent now devoted to vigilantism. He gets his targets from woo-woo woman Diana (Jena Malone), who as a counselor for victims of crime has a long list of child rapists and other offenders who require elimination.

Eventually Martin decides to stop killing mere gangsters and join Viggo in going after the real monsters.

John Hawkes

“Too Old to Die Young” represents the triumph of directorial style over plot, performance and moral underpinnings.

The performances are unrelentingly deadpan. I’m reminded of Werner Herzog’s 1976 “Heart of Glass,” where the zombielike players were hypnotized before each scene. With the limited thespian palette on display, just the hint of a smile seems monumental.  Forget about anybody laughing out loud.

William Baldwin

Despite the occasional eruption of violence, “Too Old…” is almost painfully slow and pictorial. The show is packed with tableaus so frozen that often you can tell it’s a movie and not a still photograph only by the blinking of an eye or the twitching of a finger. Refn will hold a shot until you’re ready to scream for relief.

Frequently the frame is bathed in hellish red or icy blue neon light.

Refn introduces scenes with incredibly slow pans or tracking shots. The upside of this affectation is that you’re forced to fully appreciate the painstaking composition of each frame.

Jena Malone

Dialogue is delivered between huge silent gaps; if you didn’t know better you’d think the actors are stalling for time while trying to recall their next line.

Refn is so devoted to these idiosyncratic tells that the temptation is to laugh out loud whenever we encounter one. After episode five I began amusing myself by re-editing the show in my head, tightening up those interminable shots with a snip here and a repositioned vocal track there.

“Too Old to Die Young” has a real taste for the lurid.  The onscreen action is fairly routine, but Refn often introduces us to a violent situation in its aftermath. We visit crime scenes in which the entire set appears to have been hosed down with movie blood.

An entire episode is devoted to Martin’s stalking of a pair of Albuquerque siblings (James Urbaniak, Brad Hunt) who specialize in making and distributing rape porn.

Along the way there is some shaggy dog humor.  Baldwin’s creepizoid father figure has a monologue in which he rhapsodizes about the sexual attractiveness of the teenage Janey — it appears to have been inspired by Donald Trump’s lustful appreciation of daughter Ivanka. And the homicide division in which Martin works is populated with fascistic  morons — imagine a big-city cop shop run by racist Barney Fifes.  (Hart Bochner is skin-crawlingly amusing as the frat boy lieutenant.)

It’s a seething cauldron of eccentricity, yet I can’t not finish “Too Old to Die Young.” After a while your psyche locks on to Renf’s wavelength and you start anticipating his next big bizarro reveal.

Perhaps when I’ve been through all 15 or so hours of the series I’ll conclude it adds up to very little.  But I’ve gotta admit, I want to see where it takes me.

| Robert W. Butler