True Detective (2014) – Blu-ray + Digital HD
Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
“The Long Bright Dark,” “Seeing Things,” “The Locked Room,” “Who Goes There,” The Secret Fate of All Life,” “Haunted Houses,” “After You’ve Gone,” “Form and Void”
by Jefferson Robbins SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. On the original 2003 recording of The Handsome Family‘s “Far from Any Road,” husband-and-wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks intertwine their voices sinuously, trading the song’s lonesome-death verses on equal footing. Her part pared down for the mesmeric opening credits of HBO’s “True Detective”, Rennie’s whisper becomes a sudden intrusion, jarring both the lyrical and visual narrative. It’s a hint of what’s to come in the eight-episode series itself. When a woman character exerts an active pull upon the story of tormented Louisiana State Police detectives Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), it’s an interruption, a vitriolic hiccup. Prompted by Marty’s stalking and volcanic abuse, his much younger mistress Lisa (Alexandra Daddario) reveals his serial infidelity to his wife Maggie (Michelle Monaghan). To poison Marty for his adulteries, Maggie seduces a drunken Cohle. The two cops have no female peers, only suspects, victims, bereaved mothers, hookers, and strippers to be interrogated, rescued, or ignored.