“Copenhagen Cowboy” - Nicolas Winding Refn again made a strange series with grunting men.

Nothing is clear, but very beautiful. The director's fans will love it.

For Nicolas Winding Refn, Copenhagen Cowboy became the second series. The first one was released on Amazon Video in 2019 and was called “Too Old to Die Young” - it seems that the director stopped caring about what the audience expected from him. Over the course of 10 episodes, Refn changed the main characters, twisted and moved the camera in every possible way, showed thoughtful people, demonstrated incest and desert. At the same time, the pace of the story was as low as possible.

“Copenhagen Cowboy” was released on Netflix - it is shorter, faster, but Refn does not betray himself. The new creation seems to be the strangest in his filmography .

Refn was responsible not only for directing, but also for the script, and composer Cliff Martinez wrote the original music (they collaborate with Drive). The main roles starred Angela Bundalovich (“Rain”) and Andreas Lykke Jørgensen, little known even in Denmark.

It is almost impossible to retell the plot of the series. The mysterious girl Miu, who has supernatural powers, is captured by a criminal gang. Wanting revenge on her offenders, Miu plunges into the criminal world of Copenhagen.

Abandonment of plot and characters

In Too Old to Die Young, Refn made fun of the usual approach to plot development: the main characters and their motivations were constantly changing, and the intersections of different stories were delayed.

Something similar happens in Copenhagen Cowboy, but in a more radical way. Refn doesn't tell a story so much as he concentrates on feeling and visuals. Any development of events is a priori perceived as unexpected - it is difficult to expect anything after 15 minutes of circling the camera through neon radiation.

You shouldn't take the time and geography of the series seriously. It is completely unclear how long any given event lasts. Copenhagen is just the name of the city. It might as well have been reported that the heroes live in Paris , Beijing or Washington.

The characters carry the same convention. It seems that after the first episode the viewer knows more about the main character than after watching the entire series - instead of explanations, Refn throws riddles at the audience. The field for interpretation is gigantic, and the interpretations are not designed for intellectual perception, but rather for intuitive perception. You can see in the main character a kind of good goddess, or you can treat her as an evil witch with mental disabilities.

Classic Refn

Nicolas Winding Refn continues to pray to his neon god. Any scene turns into a demonstration of lamps and backlights; the characters are regularly painted in bright colors. Almost all events take place at night , and dark rooms become the main background.

Like Too Old to Die Young, Copenhagen Cowboy features a lot of panning shots. If the heroine enters a room, then the cameras will definitely show the entire room, capturing every detail. Perhaps the main difference from the previous series is that such scenes are no longer too long. But even so, the pace of the story remains low. Refn enjoys the visuals and doesn't worry too much about whether the viewer will be bored.

Refn's classic features are evident not only in the visuals, but also in the spirit of the series. Ultra-violence, sexual overtones, forbidden desires - the heroes live in a world without laws or rules. Once again, the director collides different cultures, and in his films such contacts always end in conflict.

Esoterics and strange things

From the very first dialogues, it becomes obvious that there will be a lot of extrasensory perception in the series . Gradually this line opens up and draws everything else into it. The main character has abilities, but it is difficult to list or describe them - the viewer knows about their existence, but hardly understands.

Often in films, psychic manifestations are shown against the background of ordinary people and events for the sake of contrast. “Cowboy from Copenhagen” lives by different laws: everything here is strange, and the fact that the heroine can do something is perceived as the norm.

As the series progresses, strange and not always explained moments constantly arise. A more or less general picture emerges only after watching all six episodes, but at first they are shocking. So, some heroes can grunt and even meow . Why some men are presented as pigs (not figuratively) is a question that each viewer must answer for himself. The lack of an answer does not mean that a person was not paying attention or did not understand something - Refn never asked pseudo-intellectual riddles, his symbols do not always refer to meaning, and pigs can just be pigs.

The slow pace of the narrative, the focus on visuals, the ultra-violence - “Copenhagen Cowboy” embodies everything that Nicolas Winding Refn is loved (or hated) for. Insanely beautiful shots may tell nothing about the characters and the world they live in, and strange things can happen without any explanation. Six episodes of beauty are a wonderful gift that Refn gave to his fans. However, any viewer who does not idolize the director should run away from “Copenhagen Cowboy”: the series can become torture.