{"id":176107,"date":"2023-01-03T17:24:10","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T17:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/copenhagen-cowboy-review-nicolas-winding-refns-scattershot-netflix-series-netflix\/"},"modified":"2023-01-03T17:24:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T17:24:10","slug":"copenhagen-cowboy-review-nicolas-winding-refns-scattershot-netflix-series-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/copenhagen-cowboy-review-nicolas-winding-refns-scattershot-netflix-series-netflix\/","title":{"rendered":"Copenhagen Cowboy review \u2013 Nicolas Winding Refn’s scattershot Netflix series | Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"
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W<\/span><\/span>ith his latest project Copenhagen Cowboy, it would seem that film-maker Nicolas Winding Refn \u2013 going by NWR more and more as of late, for ease of consistent and concise branding \u2013 faces a pivotal juncture on multiple fronts.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Back in his native Denmark for the first time since 2005, working under the constraints of Covid, settling into a streaming miniseries period that’s taken him from Amazon to Netflix, and having recently turned 50 years old, he has reached the point at which most artists might conduct a personal inventory and evolve in some meaningful way as a consequence of it. The generous read of his career’s flattened arc posits that having note<\/em> done this is a testament to the clarity and force of his polarizing yet inarguably singular vision. With unflagging confidence in his style and pet themes, he’s muscled through every reason to change and held fast to his Serbian gangsters, Thai martial artists, terse avenging angels, POV insert shots of hands and abandoned rave lighting schemes of lurid neon-charged color.<\/p>\n

The less charitable take would counter that Refn’s locked-in set of strengths and weaknesses doesn’t agree with the sprawling run time of six hours, which serves only to put more space between the flashes of frighteningly intense beauty that have placed him in the ranks of A-league arthouse auteurs. At feature length (as in his 2011 masterpiece Drive), he can punctuate the long stretches of silent formalist glowering with jags of sadistic violence or arresting compositions at intervals frequent enough to hold an audience. But when untethered by any demands for concision, he gives in to his tendency toward turgidity, drawing out each installment with endless interludes of 360-degree camera panning across a cast of wordless stoics. however diminishing Refn’s returns may be, they’re littered with too many spellbinding moments to discount him completely; even and especially because of this personal stagnation, he’s become a slipperier quantity to pin down, his lingering talents at odds with his lack of interest in pushing them. He’s the same rascal, the growth instead taking place in an audience conflicted about whether he’s still worth the patience.<\/p>\n

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