The Lowdown review – Ethan Hawke is terrific in playful neo-noir series

3 hours ago 9

Ethan Hawke is hilariously raccoon-like in The Lowdown; not just because his hair is all scraggly grey-and-black, and usually in various states of disarray depending on whether his Lee Raybon is crawling out from the wrong side of the bed or the trunk of some neo-Nazi’s car.

A freelance journalist by trade (among other things), Lee is the self-appointed gumshoe in creator Sterlin Harjo’s deliciously pulpy and deceptively lighthearted noir caper. He sniffs around Tulsa, Oklahoma, digs through people’s trash, repeatedly makes a mess of things and mostly gets hostile responses from the people who have the misfortune of crossing paths with him (pretty much the world a raccoon lives in). But, every so often, someone will find Lee adorable or sympathetic enough that they just might lend him a helping hand, or even take him to bed with them.

Hawke is teaming with Harjo again in the eight-part series (of which critics received five episodes), after appearing in the latter’s Peabody-winning Reservation Dogs. He’s predictably terrific in the role, playing Lee as a rascal who we simultaneously root for and are embarrassed by. He’s a self-righteous narcissist who calls himself Tulsa’s “truthstorian”. He’s always the first to toot his own horn whenever he accomplishes something (anything), even if there’s no one around for him to share the satisfaction with. His mission to clean house around Tulsa – taking on white supremacists, crooked real estate developers and local politicians, who may all be in bed with each other – is perhaps Lee’s way to distract from how much of a disaster he’s created in his own home.

Lee is short on both child support payments – owed to his ever-patient ex Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn) – and payroll at the local bookstore he owns. He tries to make ends meet with gigs at local magazines, whether they print news or nudes. He’ll take the paycheck from whoever is willing to publish his unflattering articles about the rich and/or racist in Tulsa. For Lee, these stories are meant to kick up a storm so that he could wade through the aftermath for more answers.

There’s beauty to the chaos that fuels and follows Lee, a guy who arranges the inventory at his bookstore so that Harold Pinter sits next to Harry Potter. Crass as that pairing may seem, it’s of a piece with The Lowdown, which makes a melody out of the discordant tones and myriad influences that it has on tap.

This series is drunk on the Coen brothers, David Lynch and Raymond Chandler. Harjo and his writing team also tip their hat to Jim Thompson, the crime fiction writer, and Oklahoma native, whose hardboiled stories – about sordid affairs, double-crosses and murders involving Texas oil and construction magnates – are a literal plot device in The Lowdown. Lee finds clues to this mystery, surrounding the possible murder of a member of Oklahoma’s elite (Tim Blake Nelson, as twangy as ever), buried in those paperbacks’ pages.

The Lowdown isn’t just in conversation with those influences, but also, in compelling ways, Harjo’s Reservation Dogs. The earlier series was an achingly beautiful slacker comedy about teens from Muscogee (Creek) Nation who bounce around their tight-knit community as it heals from loss and intergenerational trauma. Reservation Dogs broke new ground for (long overdue) Indigenous representation, being led and mostly populated by people from the community, without ever feeling burdened by its own significance. Over three seasons, the series stayed inventive and light on its feet, absorbed local culture and character, tinkered with genres and eclipsed virtually everything else on television.

The Lowdown, which retains the same playfulness, is a whole new kind of flex for Harjo, a curious victory lap in this new terrain he’s forged. The Oklahoma native made the new series (with a lot of returning cast and crew) about a white man, flipping the more common and usually exploitative equation, where settler film-makers tell Indigenous stories. Watching the way white people move through an Indigenous lens turns out to be a far more rewarding experience; not just when it comes to all the crooked politicians and backroom schemers in The Lowdown.

There’s also Hawke’s Lee, who behaves a bit like a white saviour, with that narcissistic air about him. When Lee grills fellow Oklahomans about their ignorance or predatory ways, you can’t help but clock the grandstanding, and how much that performed allyship does for his own ego and sense of purpose.

That’s as good as it gets when it comes to allies, the show seems to say, not in a deflated or cynical way, but with a generous warmth and sense of hope that’s clear-eyed and practical about how noble work gets done.