New To TV: Too Old To Die Young

Time to get dark and moody with plenty of neon awaiting you! Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Drive and Neon Demon, brings a new series to Amazon Prime Video by the name of Too Old To Die Young. While we say series, Refn has essentially created 10 feature length films as each episode winds up around the 90 minute mark.

In Too Old To Die Young, Miles Teller plays Martin, a cop who is grieving after the murder of his partner. In the aftermath, Martin and his partner’s killer both become involved in a violent, dreamy (and no doubt relentlessly primary colour-soaked) world of Yakuza, cartel assassins and Russian mobsters.

Writer Ed Brubaker spoke about working with Refn last year. “It’s the most Nicolas Winding Refn thing that ever existed, honestly. It’s stylish and shocking, it has some of the best cinematography ever for television (our lead DP was the great Darius Khondji, so of course it does), and at the same time it is a meditation on these characters trapped in this world that’s not too unlike the world all around us, that feels like it’s about to fall apart, or maybe be torn apart…It’s also the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, writing that show with Nic. We had a 10-month shoot, which I think might be a record, with one director shooting it all.”

Series composer Cliff Martinez talked to ScreenDaily about the long runtime of the series, “For me the biggest change is just the endurance to do what I think of as a ten-hour movie, or a 16-hour movie in the case of ‘Too Old To Die Young.’ It’s ten episodes that are around 90 minutes a piece. I warned Nic Winding Refn, you better drink a lot of coffee and get a lot of sleep when you can.”

Starring Miles Teller (Spectacular Now), Jena Malone (The Neon Demon), William “Billy” Baldwin (Backdraft), John Hawkes (Deadwood), Cristina Rodlo (The Condemned), Augusto Aguilera (The Predator), Nell Tiger Free (Game of Thrones), Babs Olusanmokun (The Defenders), and Callie Hernandez (Alien: Covenant).