Too Old To Die Young

Reflecting on Winding Refn’s nihilistic odyssey

A glacial-paced reflection of nihilism, Too Old To Die Young is a masterpiece of restraint and a highly specific absurdity.

What punctures this surreal stillness, this precise neon melancholy, is a permeating score by Cliff Martinez, and when dubious shadows break the ice with geysers of lurid violence.‬

‪A 13-hour neo-Western, Nicolas Winding Refn’s TV series thrives on a heavy investment in viewers’ trust.

Time and place melt slowly to unravel, stitch, tease and stretch out moments which build and release tension, propel motive and action.

Miles Teller plays a grieving police officer; a man with very few words.

Winding Refn has evolved his maximalist trademarks in a desert of minimalism.‬

‪It’s a visceral trip through a fractured Western world spilling over with spiritual malaise.

Cristina Rodlo’s Yaritza — a vigilante who helps to empower women.

Moral schisms and skewed souls haunt self-preservation. Violence and sex smudge across an apocalypse of colour, shadow and sound. Where fortune is shaped by trails of death and ideas of rebirth.‬

‪Miles Teller is a classic Winding Refn near mute. Part Gosling in Drive, part grieving Sam Spade.

Jena Malone plays Diana DeYoung, a new-age therapist and victim-support officer.

But it’s the trinity of characters by Jena Malone, Cristina Rodlo and Nell Tiger Free, which connects the chaos, maps mythologies and rips open symbolism to explore.

A real slow burn.‬