The new HBO series “True Detective” structures itself around a series of well-known tropes: two macho cops find their different personalities and worldviews clashing and conflicting when they are forced to work together; a woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body is found in a murder scene with occult, ritualistic overtones; a detective follows his superior intellect to investigate a potential serial killer. Yet writer Nic Pizzolatto and director Cary Joji Fukunaga use these familiar plot devices as a simple basis on which to build an eerie, dark character study and southern thriller.<\/p>\n
The series uses a surprisingly effective story-telling device, as detectives Marty (Woody Harrelson) and Rust (Matthew McConaughey) are questioned separately in the present-day about the particulars of a closed homicide investigation that took place fifteen years in the past. Aged by makeup and hair, the actors respond to their interrogators, providing narration, commentary, excuses, and the key implication that the case we are following is somehow not quite closed. As we listen to Rust and Marty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s different perceptions the investigation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and eventually watch their stories diverge from reality as they lie to the detectives \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Pizzolatto establishes a theme of storytelling and subjectivity. As the detectives interrogate liars, drug dealers, and potential murderers, and as Rust establishes himself as a first-class, cold-hearted winner of criminal confessions, the subtle interplay between questioner and story-teller becomes more interesting than the allegedly murderous truth.<\/p>\n
Though Pizzolatto excels at intertwining an intriguing plot with complex character development, the dialogue can be clunky and overwrought. Rust, an intellectual with a dark past as an undercover narcotics CI, has a particular penchant for pessimistically philosophical dronings. When Marty often gives his partner the verbal equivalent of an annoyed elbow \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus, man, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with you? \u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/i> it comes as a comical moment for anyone who ever wanted to do the same to Dexter, Travis Bickle, Rorschach, or their pop culture brethren. The monologuing can get tiresome, and often it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to McConaughey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s credit that he can pull off some of Pizzolatto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most nonsensical lines. With a thousand-yard stare, a drag on a cigarette, and the humble obfuscation of a deep (and recently parodied<\/a>) southern drawl, McConaughey can skim rhapsodies about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mainlining the truth of the universe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without batting an eye \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but the other actors, specifically Michelle Monaghan as the philandering Marty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beleaguered wife, struggle more noticeably with the unwieldy prose.<\/p>\n