Justified: City Primeval Review: An Excellent Return To Form For Timothy Olyphant
There are few things more satisfying in popular culture than watching an actor align perfectly with a specific character. Such was a great part of the thrill of watching the FX drama "Justified" when it aired from 2010 to 2015, as the laconic actor Timothy Olyphant proved to be the only possible person to bring to life Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, whose sense of justice was as inspired by his youth in Kentucky as it was seemingly inspired by Old West lawmen with rigid codes of right and wrong. Olyphant has since shown a propensity for humor (not only through his various talk-show appearances but in the sadly departed Netflix comedy "Santa Clarita Diet") and appeared in projects as wide-ranging as Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" and David O. Russell's "Amsterdam." But Olyphant's signature type of role is that of the firm and fierce lawman, so it's just as thrilling to see him return as Raylan in the new FX limited series "Justified: City Primeval," which is often as satisfying and effective as the show that inspired it.
When we first revisit Raylan, he's back in Florida, having moved to Miami after the events of the six-season drama. He's on a road trip to drop his daughter Willa (VIvian Olyphant, the actor's real-life daughter) off at college. But there are — as there always are in the world of Elmore Leonard, whose books inspired the original series and this sequel — complications. Raylan fends off an attempted carjacking, but in so doing, runs afoul of the legal system in Detroit, which he quickly finds to be uniquely corrupt and broken. There's a fierce defense attorney, Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis), who separates the fact that her client (Raylan's attempted carjacker) has plenty of prior offenses on his record with Raylan's poor treatment of the man after having disarmed him. After angering the powerful judge (Keith David) overseeing the case, Raylan is essentially remanded to assist local cops in a specific case involving that judge. And when that judge and his assistant are killed one night, Raylan's on point to solve the murder and bring the killer down. Solving the murder turns out to be quite easy, as it's the handiwork of Clement Manzell (Boyd Holbrook), nicknamed the Oklahoma Wildman and very gleefully living up to the name as he stalks around the city, gets in Raylan's head, and reveals a disturbing lucky streak that lets him continue to walk free.
So much of what makes "Justified: City Primeval" work is what made the previous series work, boiling down to two factors: effective casting and a strong ability to replicate Leonard's distinctive way of writing dialogue. With Olyphant off on this new adventure, the cast surrounding him is brand-new to the world of the series and fits in just as smoothly as any of the regular actors on the old show. Ellis stands out as Carolyn, whose careful balance of defending truly scummy individuals with angling towards a judge's chair herself comes into conflict both with Manzell's behavior and with a surprisingly increasing connection to Raylan beyond a tense initial cross-examination in court. Vondie Curtis Hall, as an old guardian of Carolyn's who has criminal connections to Manzell too, does sly and solid work as well. But the true highlight is Holbrook, who — in another life — could well have played Raylan as a younger man. (He's having a high-profile couple of weeks, considering that he's a baddie in the new "Indiana Jones" movie, but this show utilizes his skills in vastly better fashion.) Holbrook's role is arguably challenging, as by the end of the eight episodes, some of his behavior is so flagrant that you wonder how Manzell has gotten away with so much for so long. But he makes the villain both richly multi-dimensional and disturbing throughout. (Manzell's propensity for the musical work of Jack White leads to a creepy moment where he mocks Raylan in song, an unexpected but impressive touch.)
The man comes around
Of course, "Justified: City Primeval" would be nothing without its delightfully flowery dialogue — provided often by series developers and co-writers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner — and the rock-solid Timothy Olyphant at its center. This isn't Olyphant's first go-round at reviving an old lawman character of his, after "Deadwood: The Movie" brought the rigid Seth Bullock back for one more time on HBO. But as good as Olyphant was on "Deadwood," he got to dig into a deeper, more developed character in Raylan on "Justified." So his return here is all the more enjoyable because there's never the sense that he doesn't miss this character any more than we do.
The dicey aspect of Raylan is played up most of all in the opening episode, one of two that premiere on July 18, 2023. (I've seen all eight episodes of the series.) In the original show, both because of the setting and because racial tensions weren't as notably high, a cowboy-hat-wearing lawman enacting his personal form of justice managed to avoid seeming like red flag after red flag. But Carolyn's aforementioned cross-examination of Raylan in the premiere, as she scabrously notes that Raylan had put a Black man in the trunk of his car to ensure he wouldn't flee before being dropped off in Michigan, emphasizes that such a lawman may be a man out of time in a society still reeling from the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing real-life protests. Elements like this are added in, but wisely not leaned on too heavily, in adapting a specific novel of Leonard's, "City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit." The real world still very much exists in this world, yet the series mostly moves on from any more detailed criticism of Raylan and how the sun may have set upon his brand of justice.
That Timothy Olyphant never became a movie star feels like one of those expanding mistakes in 21st-century Hollywood — he's come close a couple of times to capturing big roles, but his most powerful work has always been on the small screen. Of course, if Olyphant had become a movie star (it's been noted in the past that it came down to him and Robert Downey, Jr. to play Tony Stark), we wouldn't have gotten his version of Raylan Givens on "Justified." As that show proved, and as the sterling "Justified: City Primeval" re-proves, there is only one man to play this Marshal, and that's Olyphant. The series surrounding him is quite good and solidly expanded upon, but it lives or dies on his shoulders. Thankfully, with each ensuing hour, Timothy Olyphant goes out of his way to remind us how much we've missed him in this world.
/Film Rating: 9 out of 10