My first Nicolas Winding Refn work. Right from the second it begins you can tell this is the product of an auteur by its one of a kind sense of style. Scenes are bathed in neon light, clothes are lavish and flamboyant, the key performances are moody to fit the grim nature of the content, actors (particularly the extras) spend a lot of time cool posing in frame, and trucking shots seem to be the director's (of all 10 episodes btw) calling card. Visually it lacks for nothing. Narratively on the other hand... Well, that will be dependent on the viewer I suppose. Following the death of his partner and being forced into serving as a hitman for an underground crime gang, a corrupt sociopathic cop starts having an existential crisis and begins to search for a way of using his murderous tendencies for good. Becoming a sort of vigilante who targets rapists, pedophiles, and the rest of the worst humanity has to offer. It's a bleak, dark tale filled with depravity. Hyper violent and gruesome, with stuff like our leading man even being engaged in a sexual relationship with a teenager. Refn co-created this with Ed Brubaker of comic book fame. As such, you can really feel the influence that other medium has. There are countless, regularly released limited series runs that try to get by on edgy, or I'm sorry, "mature" material in the form of graphic portrayals of gore, sexuality, and nudity presented through a unique art style and not much else. Because nothing says thoughtful adult reading like throwing a penis, titty, or some heavy profanity in a panel and calling it a day. A degree of that same mentality can be found here as you'll be subjected to a near-constant array of explicitly portrayed brutality and fetishistic sex acts, all of which could be construed as occuring without any sort of intended meaning. I think when presented with some perverse piece of artistic expression like this we try our best to justify our enjoyment of it by interpreting or even imposing a theme/message from its creator on it. You can easily come up with an endless number of theories about what Refn and Brubaker were trying to convey here. Be it a moral critique of humanity's penchant for savagery, a meta-commentary on how we the viewers crave watching degeneracy whether it has a point or not supported by our continued viewing of the show, or some pretentious crap about it being so "style over substance" that its nihilistic lack of depth is actually why its deep. As you might have guessed I played around with a few ideas in my head as to the intentions behind the project, if there were any, but eventually gave up near the middle of the series because it seemed like the story kind of continuously gets off track with filler. Likely in no small part due to it's length (but more on that in a bit...). I applaud Refn and crew for taking full advantage of the apparently wide range of freedom they were granted by throwing whatever they wanted to onscreen. The emphasis on quantity does effect the quality however, with the proceedings tending to meander about for a while without focus before finally deciding to deliver the next significant plot beat. Leading to bizarre tonal shifts, sometimes comedic, that don't fit the rest of the subject matter. Like whatever the heck is going on with the detective precinct or William Baldwin's character. These distractions never prevent the experience from being any less inexplicably entrancing in the moment, but you can't help wondering by the end if those stretches wouldn't have been better spent developing the overarching storyline which remains painfully unfinished. It's unclear if this was always meant to be a miniseries or if Amazon cancelled their second season plans pre-release after watching it for themselves. The information I've found online has been very vague and somewhat conflicting on that front. My personal belief is that the latter is true, but if I'm wrong and it's the former everyone involved should be ashamed. A classic bait-and-switch is pulled where a big name actor is used to pull you in until the makers can usher them out to tell the tale they want to with the supporting cast once you're invested. They introduce a stronger element of the supernatural and set up a massive conflict by the conclusion that will never be resolved. This isn't just unfulfilling, but frustrating as well thanks to what a huge commitment reaching that point is. Every episode except the last is a difficult to binge, roughly hour-and-a-half in length meaning you're basically sitting down to watch nine feature-length movies in a row. Every second is undeniably beautiful and mesmerizing, but to make it through all of that and find no sense of closure ultimately leaves that time feeling like it was spent for naught.