Series Review: "Too Old to Die Young" (2019).

From the director of Drive and Only God Forgives comes Too Old to Die Young. This crime drama miniseries created by Nicolas Winding Refn and Ed Brubaker, written by Refn, Brubaker and Halley Gross, and directed by Refn. In one tragic night, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Martin Jones's life is blown apart, and he is forced into a deadly underground of Cartel soldiers, Yakuza assassins, and mysterious vigilantes. Soon he finds himself lost on a surreal odyssey of murder, mysticism and vengeance, as his past sins close in on him.

In early February 2017, it was announced that Amazon had given the production, created and penned by  Refn and Brubaker, a series order for a first season consisting of ten episodes with Refn set to direct every episode. Refn said he came up with the title while he was finishing his last movie, The Neon Demon (2016), stating that he liked the prospect of having a much bigger canvas to tell a story. By late November, Miles Teller, Augusto Aguilera, Nell Tiger Free, John Hawkes, Jena Malone, William Baldwin, Callie Hernandez, Babs Olusanmokun, Hart Bochner, Joanna Cassidy, Callan Mulvey and Hideo Kojima were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in early August 2018. Filming took place in Los Angeles, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico. At one point during filming, Refn told cinematographer Darius Khondji that he wanted to shoot the series on an iPhone, since they were watching playback on their phones. This idea, however, was scrapped due to resolutions problems. When the show premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, Refn made the odd choice to screen episodes four and five, instead of starting with episode one. His reason for this choice was that he wanted to serve up the episodes to Cannes audiences in a way that teenagers consume digital content; not always in a page one-to-one hundred type of sequence as they tend to skip around.

The series stars Teller, Aguilera, Free, Hawkes, Malone, Baldwin, Hernandez, Olusanmokun, Bochner, Cassidy, Mulvey and Kojima. Since all the "characters" are archetypes, there's no way to really climb inside the series and be emotionally affected by any of it. Teller is little more than eye candy; he plays Martin as if he's always just about ready for a nap.

Immaculately designed and choreographed, the film looks and sounds fantastic. Its composition and colors all seem like house of cards at first, but its plasticity grows on you. This is a gorgeous film to look at, hypnotic in presentation, with a forceful, deliberate pace that propels you deeper and deeper into this dysfunctional criminal world. Although this criminal revenge drama seems absorbing in the visuals, it is hard to forgive him with its bland narrative. This is style over substance at its worst. That's not to say that the series lacks substance; the substance is just pretentiousness soaked in entrails and excrement. Sensationalistic as it may be, with its repetitiveness and slow pacing, the series feels embalmed.

Simon says Too Old to Die Young receives:

Also, see my review for The Neon Demon.