With his latest project Copenhagen Cowboy, it would seem that film-maker Nicolas Winding Refn – going by NWR more and more as of late, for ease of consistent and concise branding – faces a pivotal juncture on multiple fronts.
Back in his native Denmark for the first time since 2005, working under the constraints of Covid, settling into a streaming miniseries period that’s taken him from Amazon to Netflix, and having recently turned 50 years old, he has reached the point at which most artists might conduct a personal inventory and evolve in some meaningful way as a consequence of it. The generous read of his career’s flattened arc posits that having not done this is a testament to the clarity and force of his polarizing yet inarguably singular vision. With unflagging confidence in his style and pet themes, he’s muscled through every reason to change and held fast to his Serbian gangsters, Thai martial artists, terse avenging angels, POV insert shots of hands and abandoned rave lighting schemes of lurid neon-charged color.
