True Grit
8 Episodes. Starring: Mahershala Ali, Carmen Ejogo, Stephen Dorff, Scoot McNairy & Ray Fisher. Creator: Nic Pizzolatto.
Sparking like orange firecracker illuminating embers (not January embers) off the ash tip of a cigarette resting idle in an ashtray. Vacant with an empty shot glass and bottle of bourbon by the bar next to it as it's only lonley company. A couple of crumpled and worn dollars with Lincoln fading as it's coaster. Season 3 of 'True Detective' is as slow burning as they compelling come. Like condensation running down the side of a cold one. So much so you may sit here and ask yourself, "why is this writer reviewing a show that came out in January now. Over half a year later"? Well for one not all of us have HBO. Some of us just have regular ass T.V. Not all of us have seen 'Game Of Thrones'...no matter how much we'd like to. Have you got a spare 62 hours? One for something you have already had social media spoiled time and time again ever since you heard an old girlfriend screaming the house down downstairs and ran down to help, only to be met with the Red Wedding? Exactly! I successfully managed to binge 'Stranger Things 3' over a week of being in the U.S.A. for the fourth of July between Greyhounds and waiting for connecting flights, only to have the ending (which we won't even) spoiled by a major media outlet of all accounts posting a reaction article online on social media with the dead name in the damn title. So even when we do binge in this industry trying to get a review out as quickly and diligently as possible it doesn't always work out to our advantage. And when it's comes to the latest series of Nic Pizzolatto's 'True Detective' that Barkley rebounds from the sophomore slump, but still amazing performances from Rachel McAdams, Taylor Kitsch, Vince Vaughn and especially born to be beat cop Colin Farrell and returns to the hallmark heydey of executive producers Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey's classic series, nursing it over the course of a year like a fine malt is the perfect slow burn for this season and it's nature in the age of binge.
Narratively it matches the rule of three time frames of reference that percolate through the photographic memories of our main protagonists here. Trying to seemingly solve the unsolvable in a missing kids case that rabbit holes over the generations from the seventies style to the modern musings. Taking your time with this slow but assured series makes you feel like you're part of the investigation too. Feeling the time worn and aged weary nature of this incendiary investigation. No cinematic storytelling has done this since you felt the eager strain and desperate times of the three hour long 'Zodiac' movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. You feel right there with them. So much so like you're riding shotgun in their cruising cop car confidential's (remember, "this is a bar, not a f###### bedside"?) and this terrifically directed time lapse one here that have become a 'True' trademark just like their epic, singular shootout scenes. That one shot hood biker escape. And just wait until this one unloads from the classic clip. Your T.V. set might just claymore explode. And after the dynamite, dynamic duo of the first season and the throw every Hollywood big name and the kitchen sink at the writers room wall and see what sticks second, this series seemingly focuses on one. 'Moonlight' and 'Green Book', back-to-back 'Best Supporting Actor' Oscar winner Mahershala Ali taking the lead for his Emmy. And moving, mesmerizing and even polarising in his punctuated scenes, Ali is a knockout. But you best believe this is more than Mahershala too in a series that in a time of CG needs it's make up department awarded for just how old they make these characters look over time as the actors match that ante with their smarts. We can all recede a hairline (have you seen mine? Nope! Neither have I), but what is done here to evoke the worn and weary lapse of time and memory is nothing short of miraculous to be pulled off this genuinely and convincingly. But believe me that's not the only reason you see Stephen Dorff here like you've never seen him before. The vampire overlord Deacon West himself seems like a throw in name next to an Oscar winner after all the big ones this show has produced. Feeling more as an aside like when you try to put down where else you know him from. That is until Dorff commands the screen with his drawl and drawn down south, always smooth cool presence that is one Bolo tie away from making even McConaughey look like a fraud. Just how good is Stephen Dorff? I for one underestimated him as a younger actor. The scene stealing X-factor. From a classic bar fight after some beautiful one sided banter when he just wanted to self destruct and make someone else make him pay for his sins, to his emotional canine counsel on the blood spat sidewalk with just another stray looking for some stroke. Dorff is definitive and the crazy thing is that after the show wrapped, months later before we wrote this Mahershala Ali was picked up by Marvel to be the new 'Blade' vampire hunter in the next chapter of his storied career. Now how's that for poetic synchronicity?
Second billing though in a show of different seasons that has always been about more than just two partners like the sinister but sublime score from the Wild West's T Bone Burnett, however goes to Carmen Ejogo. The 'Best Actress' worthy actor has been on a hot streak for a half decade now ever since she perfectly played Coretta Scott King alongside MLK in the glory of 'Selma'. From 'Alien: Covenant' and Denzel Washington's 'Roman J. Israel Esq'. To the 'Harry Potter' spin-off 'Fantastic Beast' movies. And finding her loving Ali like the boxers wives and forging her own path and page as a writer. Penning a true crime book about the disappearance and haunting in memory and how she shadows the police case for her own details...but all with courtesy, professionalism, dignity and respect. This may be Ejogo's, evoking best yet. The same can be said for platinum character actor Scoot McNairy. One hit and award away from his own stardom...and this may be it. The 'Killing Them Softly' and 'Argo' star is far from the 'all Adam Sandler's friends get a job' of Ben Affleck movies (see 'Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice'...no seriously. See it! We can't keep preaching about the Martha aside criminally and critically underrated super, superhero movie). 'Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood' he even made a recent cameo in a Quentin Tarantino movie alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. But here he excels as an understandably spiralling father paranoid to death and frightened with where on earth his children are...if they're even still alive at all. His desperate measures come from times the same. It's a complex, layered nuanced performance in a show as such. Not just the slow alcohol soaked and medicated destruction of nerve and self. Even 'Justice League' Cyborg Ray Fisher gets the compliments for his beautifully restrained performance of the grind of a son trying to keep it all together as his father is slowly losing his mind. Also showing you that Cyborg's father is Blade for your superhero degrees of separation. Add a cult favourite from the M.C.U. whistling in the wind and adding an unforgettable cameo and that will more than make up for those pining for a twin McConaughey or Carnage of Harrelson appearance alongside that newspaper Easter Egg reference report between the peaks. Because its all twine doll sacrifice connecting across the narrative strands of each separate season and separate story arcs between the trees, highways and flat circles. All the way to the canvas of the artistic smoke and smashed frame mirror, terrific title sequence of this vivid imagination. And from afro and tweed to salt and pepper hair, now this story is across the decades complete and this detective is true again let's hope they get back on another case. Because we know just the one to be reopened never case closed. Together. Walking hand-in-hand to extinction. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Further Filming: 'True Detective (Season 1)', 'The Wire', 'Mindhunter'.
No comments:
Post a Comment