Whether it's Hollywood's inability to spawn new blockbuster icons or the entertainment industry's commitment to placate an audience with an insatiable desire for nostalgia, the summer of 2023 has taken on a distinctly Twilight-of-the-world feeling. -Action-Gods.
The season began with Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the streaming equivalent of a '90s Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, now featuring musings on parenthood and near retirement, on Netflix's FUBAR. Then Harrison Ford added meditations on parenthood and retirement in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The only reason Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One isn't about fatherhood and approaching retirement is the fear that if Tom Cruise were ever to confront, or even address, his own aging, the factory of metaphorical dreams would implode.
Creators: Dave Andron, Michael Dinner
Stars: Timothy Olyphant, Boyd Holbrook, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Into this fray of grizzled tough-guy icons advances Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens. For 78 episodes on FX's Justified, Raylan Givens was a throwback personification of rage-fuelled masculinity, a classic Western square peg stuck in a sentimental modern round hole. Excellent genre storytelling for five of its six seasons, sorry season five, Justified had an all-time great series finale and after "We Dig Coal Together" there was apparently no place for that show.
The relief of FX's eight-part Justified: City Primeval is that it not only doesn't taint the original's near-perfect conclusion, but creates distinctive new terrain for Givens and a cast of fresh, sometimes spectacular supporting characters. If showrunners Dave Andron and Michael Dinner haven't matched Justified in season two, nothing could, they've given us a welcome reminder of just how remarkable Olyphant is in this role and have carefully, if not exhaustively, considered how this character works in a contemporary landscape.
The limited series begins with Olyphant's Givens now stationed in Florida, taking a break from his US Marshal duties, with no retirement or office job for Raylan, to transport 15-year-old daughter Willa (Vivian Olyphant). to a disciplinary summer camp. Sullen and generally glued to her phone, Willa is a chip off the old block, earning her penalty for punching a classmate in the nose.
This brief opportunity for father-daughter bonding is lost when a botched carjacking leads Raylan to testify at a Detroit hearing in front of an easily irritable judge (Keith David) and a savvy defense attorney (Carolyn Wilder of Aunjanue Ellis), neither of which he is particularly tolerant of his retro law and order antics. As Carolyn says later in the season, echoing a memorable line from the original pilot: “You're angry. I understand. I would also be angry. But not everyone gets angry like you.
Soon, Raylan is forced into a joint investigation with the Detroit Police Department: Victor Williams, Marin Ireland and Norbert Leo Butz take on the usually thankless roles as partners with lone wolf Givens, in a pair of confusing murders related to the slippery sociopath Clement Mansel (Boyd Holbrook), a man so bereft of a moral compass that he's dubbed "The Oklahoma Wildman." The case, which leaves Willa trapped in a Detroit hotel room, also involves veteran session musician, bar owner, and drug dealer Sweety (Vondie Curtis-Hall), Clement's weed-loving girlfriend, Sandy (Adelaide Clemens), and the entire Albanian mob.
Raylan spent most of the original series in Kentucky, surrounded by estranged family members and old acquaintances; his deep roots allowed him to know places and things with total comfort. That story ended with the 2015 series finale. The smartest thing Andron and Dinner, among an assortment of returning Justified veterans, did here was to start with a book by Elmore Leonard, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, which it wasn't really a Raylan Givens novel.
Shoeing Raylan into City Primeval doesn't just make him a fish out of water; he strips him of all traces of his justified support structure. This is not a callback machine. So don't expect Raylan to pay prison visits to a Hannibal Lecter-esque Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) fare, him receiving supportive calls from Nick Searcy's Art, or helpful visits from his Marshal colleagues. Honestly, I missed "Long Hard Times to Come" absent from Gangstagrass much more than Tim or Rachel, but I support the need for differentiation.
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