Too Old To Die Young (2019)

Too Old To Die Young is the latest offering from Nicolas Winding Refn and Amazon Prime that is an extended film broken down into ten episodes with a running time between an hour and a half to a little over an hour per episode.  In other words, Refn has guaranteed that fans of his work will be getting their money’s worth.  TOTDY is a brutal, surprising and stylish look into Refn’s criminal underworld full of hit men, drug cartels and corrupt police officers with shifting identities that never turn out who they pretend to be.  Episode One (The Devil) opens with the protagonist Martin, a police officer who witnesses his co-worker extort money and threaten a civilian stopped for a routine traffic violation.  After his co-worker is killed due to a robbery gone wrong involving the leader of a Mexican drug cartel, the revenge murder introduces the audience to Jesus and Yaritza (a.k.a. The High Priestess of Death), the inherited leaders of the Mexican drug cartel establishing their power within the drug underworld.  Episode Two (The Lovers) centers on Jesus’ family, their cartel business and the death of both matriarch and patriarch that ends the peace agreement between Mexican law enforcement and the cartel family.  Each episode featuring Martin and Jesus present the idea that people are never who they really seem to be.  The characters seem to have ordinary lives while maintaining very seedy connections to the drug culture underworld.  The opening sequence of Episode Four (The Tower) includes a shot of a movie broadcast of the 1961 thriller Night Tide, a film about a mysterious woman with a very big secret that reinforces the theme of mysterious identities and helps connect Martin’s identity shift from law enforcement officer to a moralistic vigilante.  While Martin is promoted to a Los Angeles investigative unit, his first assignment involves the murder of a pedophile physical therapist that lead him to Viggo and Diana.  Her occupation is a violent crimes advocate, but she also provides an offering when the time is right that consists of the name and address of the perpetrator who committed a violent crime against her victims.  This offering allows Viggo and eventually Martin to kill them off as a final retribution for the victim.  The remaining episodes shift back to Jesus and Yaritza and their retribution against Martin for his involvement with the robbery gone wrong and the death of their matriarch.  The conclusion of Too Old To Die Young is a final identity shift involving Jesus and Yaritza and the film itself that crosses genres from crime thriller to mystical science fiction.  

The extended narrative of Too Old To Die Young touches on various themes regarding family, Christianity and Trump’s America.  Family is emphasized with scenes between Viggo and his mother, Jesus and Yaritza, Martin and his girlfriend’s father, as well as a gangster named Damian and an intimate scene of his daughter ice skating.  Jesus and his mother Magdalena reference Christian biblical scripture and tarot mysticism throughout the episodes while the sequence of Viggo wiping out an entire trailer park in an exaggerated manner is clearly about Trump’s middle America socioeconomic demographic.  Stylistically, frame composition is at the forefront of the film and cinematographers Darius Khondji and Diego Garcia compliment the tension building narrative with the occasional neon-soaked lighting.  Deep space, shallow focus and extreme close-up camerawork often emphasize the open desert terrain that help create a sense of isolation and dread effectively.  There is consistent panning from left to right and back again throughout every episode, while the actors do not move and pose within the frame instead.  However, most of the camera work often seems flat and never quite reaches the visual dazzle of Natasha Braier’s cinematography work from my personal favorite The Neon Demon.  

Nicolas Winding Refn is often referred to as a cinema bad boy and there is plenty of shock value to be found here.  Scenes with complacent and drawn out dialogue are interrupted with bursts of violence that is often brutal and uncomfortable to watch.  Too Old To Die Young touches on everything from sexualized violence, bisexuality, homophobia, misogyny and everything in between. Regardless, Too Old To Die Young has plenty to offer and is definitely worth checking out and fans of his work certainly will not be disappointed either.    

🎬🎬🎬   (3 out of 4)