Too Old to Die Young – first look review

Increas­ing­ly Cannes is no stranger to tele­vi­sion pre­mieres. In 2017 the fes­ti­val screened episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return and Top of the Lake: Chi­na Girl. Fol­low­ing David Lynch and Jane Cam­pi­on is three-time Palme d’Or nom­i­nee Nico­las Wind­ing Refn, who brings his sig­na­ture flair for the dra­mat­ic and pen­chant for all things neon to the fes­ti­val with Too Old to Die Young. The deci­sion to only show parts four and five of the 10-part Ama­zon series is per­plex­ing, but the plot across these two episodes is con­tained enough to just about hold it togeth­er, giv­ing a sense of things to come.

In Los Ange­les’ seedy under­bel­ly, police offi­cer Mar­tin Jones (Miles Teller), has a side gig as a hit­man, tak­ing out the most rep­re­hen­si­ble né’er-do-wells the City of Angels has to offer. True to Refn form, Jones is a man of few words, prone to brood­i­ly star­ing into the mid­dle dis­tance. Sev­er­al times he refus­es mon­ey for his ser­vices. ​“You want the blood,” one client remarks, with a glim­mer of respect. Jones, nat­u­ral­ly, says nothing.

His cru­sade takes him to Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co, where his tar­gets are a pair of chill­ing­ly unhinged pornog­ra­ph­er broth­ers (one played with glee­ful men­ace by James Urba­ni­ak). Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, there are hints of plot lines to come: Bil­ly Baldwin’s bil­lion­aire talks to his teenage daugh­ter Janey (Nell Tiger Free) about her post-high school prospects; Vig­go (John Hawkes) pays a vis­it to Jena Malone’s mys­te­ri­ous mystic.

As demon­strat­ed in The Neon Demon and Dri­ve, Refn’s hyp­not­ic, hyper-stylised aes­thet­ic suits the mean streets of Los Ange­les, but the stand-out scene across these episodes takes place on a long stretch of desert road; a sur­re­al car chase set to, of all songs, Bar­ry Manilow’s ​‘Mandy’. The director’s glib humour rip­ples across the slick, oily sur­face, and Cliff Martinez’s elec­tron­ic score is the per­fect companion. 

Yet the run­time of the episodes could prob­a­bly be halved if the char­ac­ters only spoke and moved a lit­tle faster. The glacial pace wears thin after a while, as do shots of female bod­ies which linger to the point of feel­ing fetishis­tic. It’s too ear­ly to tell how much this plays into the series as a whole, and per­haps it’s more of a focus in these episodes because they specif­i­cal­ly focus on pornog­ra­phy made under duress.

There’s enough to sug­gest that the rest of Too Old to Die Young will be worth catch­ing up with when it hits the inter­net in June, but it’s a bit­ter­sweet thought that it will only be view­able on small screens. The visu­als alone are wor­thy of a big screen recep­tion, and as the line between cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion con­tin­ues to blur, it seems even more frus­trat­ing that shows with so much clear thought and craft behind them become rel­e­gat­ed to squares on a land­ing page.