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| Wrinkled, jumpy poster for Nic Pizzolato and Cary Fukunaga's True Detective, indicating the America we meet in the series |
True Detective is HBO's 8-episode TV-series smash hit from earlier this year, an American outskirts crime show of a complicated case of grisly murders. The whole series is written and created by Nic Pizzolatto (The Killing (2011)) and directed by Oakley-born Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre (2009)).
In Louisiana in the 1990's, State Police Detective Marty Hart (Woody Harrelsen (Kingpin (1996)) gets a new partner in Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey (Mud (2012)), an intense nihilist, who has previously spend 4 years as an undercover narc agent. They team up on a shocking new case, where a young woman has been brutalized and left out in the open in a mystifying staging with antlers on her head.
The series jumps in time from what is at first its main stage (the 90's investigation) to some interrogations of Hart and Cohle in contemporary time, where they talk mysteriously about the case, - and we never learn exactly for what reason they are being questioned about it. The time-lines are a little confusing, but the series is generally very well-paced, never rushed, and well-written as well.
We also follow the two protagonist detectives in their private lives, in which Hart's infidelity SPOILER leads to a divorce from his wife (Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye (2008))), while Cohle lives a reclusive, unusual life of hard recognitions.
While Hart's wife's protestations are tiring at times, and Cohle's solemn, glum speeches about the circulating nature of time and other things he believes are true become boring a few times, we can revel in great, cinematic photography by Adam Arkapaw (Lore (2012)) and a buzzing, vibrant, modern score and great opening song by T Bone Burnett (Walk the Line (2005)).
The series has many high-points and a real talent for creating cliffhangers. When the suspect is finally found in a dangerous, wild compound, he SPOILER gets shot. But our friends later find that he may not have been the bad guy they were looking for.
- Bad guys abound in True Detective, in which America's backbone gets examined and comes out rotten to its core; full of drug-dealers, gang violence, dirty religious enterprises, child molesters, meth-junkies, fanatics, gun craziness, ruthless bikers, whores, occult nuts and sexual freaks.
The details:
Both leads have good roles here; the series becomes another notch in McConaughey's belt of his incredible comeback over the last years; but for me it was especially Harrelson who impressed as the untangling, lead-bellied family father who just can't keep his dick in his pants. His performance is a reason to see True Detective in itself.
As the series continues, we move up to present day, where Cohle is continuing the investigation from outside the force, in a garage, aiming at a suspect, Christian Tuttle-foundation with ties to the State Senator. He convinces Hart to join the investigation, and they soon find out - by various unlawful methods, - that the real perpetrator SPOILER was under their, and our, noses all along, sitting on a lawn mower. In the end, they go in alone to get to the bottom of the horrifying Childers' house and 'church'. Severely wounded, they both manage to get out with their lives, while taking the 'monsters'' ditto, and as the series fade out, they contemplate the darkness in the world beneath the stars outside the hospital, concluding, looking up, that light is gaining power, but that darkness is still immense.
True Detective is very good television, in the vein of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but without that film's psychological depth, and Se7en (1995), without its Biblical references; it deals with some of the mess in modern society in an entertaining way, but doesn't get to the root of any of the problems it presents; in this way, it is a little showy, overrated and confusingly broad in its scope, pointing to nothing, essentially.
It may or may not get more consequential in its second season, which will have a completely new cast and story, as well as several directors, but will still be written by Pizzolatto. The stars of the coming season include Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Taylor Kitsch, Kelly Reilly and Rachel McAdams.
Best episodes:
Episode 3:
SPOILER The proposed perpetrator, Reggie Ledoux is found donning a gas-mask on his property in one of the series' best cliffhanger-endings of all.
Episode 4:
Hart's unfaithfulness gets consequences, while Cohle goes undercover with his former identity 'Crash', and a robbery in a black slum neighborhood explodes in perplexing violence.
Episode 8:
After the two now private detectives have harassed some truth out of a sheriff (using a sniper rifle among other means), they find and search out the somber Childers' house and 'church'.
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| Woody Harrelson gives one of his best performances in Nic Pizzolatto's True Detective |
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| Matthew McConaughey makes beer can people and gets a little long in the tooth at times in Nic Pizzolatto's True Detective |
What do you think of True Detective?
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