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The Lowdown ★★★★
As played with scarecrow defiance and questionable self-care by Ethan Hawke, The Lowdown’s Lee Raybon is a self-styled “truthstorian”. A freelance writer whose abiding passion is the murky history and ongoing scandals underpinning his hometown of Tulsa, this garrulous southerner sees conspiracies everywhere, talks a great game, and gets periodically punched in the face by disgruntled subjects. “He’s a loon,” notes his shopfront lawyer, Dan (Macon Blair). “The best kind – he keeps me entertained.” The viewer should feel likewise.
Ethan Hawke plays Lee Raybon, a self-styled “truthstorian”, in The Lowdown.
Writer and director Sterlin Harjo’s follow-up to the terrific Reservation Dogs, a bittersweet coming-of-age comedy set on Oklahoma’s Native American tribal lands, is a crime thriller that refuses to recognise the genre’s boundaries. It may start with a suspicious suicide, that of old money black sheep Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), but the narrative has a loosey-goosey vibe and absurd side missions to offset the vengeful white power skinheads and a suspicious widow, Betty Jo Washberg (Jeanne Tripplehorn).
With its nods to The Big Lebowski and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, that is a tricky outline to pull off. The eccentricities and the emerging evil have to meaningfully coexist. Thankfully, Harjo does it with ease. He has a natural feel for shapeshifters, whether it’s a sudden leap in tone or a spectral sidestep in reality – when Lee finds a cache of Dale’s writings the deceased appears next to him to deliver a reading. Given that Lee’s a stoner, it makes sense: the show gives off a contact high.
Cody Lightning as Waylon, Jude Barnett as Cousin Henry, Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon in The Lowdown.
Minor characters have surprisingly rich lives, often with a twist that upends expectations, and Harjo has a stacked supporting cast that includes Keith David as an admirer of Lee’s writing, rapper Killer Mike (aka Michael Render) playing a highly unlikely publisher, and Kyle McLachlan as Dale’s backslapping brother and candidate for state governor, Donald Washberg. Peter Dinklage turns up as Lee’s chaotic pal Wendell, and he and Hawke turn into a hillbilly punk Abbott and Costello before their regrets catch up with them.
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Hawke isn’t a comic actor, but he knows the fractious, farcical energy of true believers. Crucially, The Lowdown doesn’t just coast on Lee’s slapdash charm and dogged mission to figure out how Dale’s death ties into other nefarious strands. At one pungent Tulsa location after another, it nips at Lee’s self-belief, looks askance at the price others might pay. You see Lee through the eyes of his 13-year-old daughter, Francis (Ryan Keira Armstrong), who’s a natural sleuth and somehow far too involved in her father’s work. That’s an unexpected gambit – thankfully this show is full of them.
The Lowdown streams on Disney+ from September 24.
