A History of Violence

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Michele K. Short/HBO

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY IS A VIRTUOSO BLINKER. He plays a psycho homicide cop in HBO's excellent new True Detective, and all you have to do is watch him blink to see he is seriously screwed up. He has an amazing scene where he’s driving through Louisiana late at night, alone in the car, brooding over a small-town murder case. He tries to blink his eyes in unison, but he can’t – one eye twitches, then the other. The moment is terrifying. This is definitely not the laid-back bongos-and-bong-hits McConaughey we all know and love. This guy has some toxic sludge clogging his brain.

True Detective is a tour de force for McConaughey and Woody Harrelson – two veteran actors reaching way outside their comfort zone, at the top of their game. Most of True Detective is these two playing off each other, as a pair of cops pursuing a ritual murder case in 1995, after a body is found tied to a tree, with antlers attached to the head. They’re the classic mismatched partners, both living with demons of their own. Harrelson is the by-the-book cop who struggles to contain his bottled-up rage. McConaughey is the socially maladjusted 
cerebral loner. As Harrelson says, speaking with contempt for his partner, “He’d pick a fight with the sky if he didn’t like its shade of blue.”

This is an extract. To read the full story, pick up a copy of Rolling Stone Middle East

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