Eleven years ago, HBO debuted the first season of True Detective. The series was a milestone for both creator Nic Pizzolatto and star Matthew McConaughey, earning the latter Golden Globe and Emmy nominations and kicking off what’s become known as The McConaissance. True Detective‘s first season was arguably an artistic high point for both men — so it’s not at all strange to see that the two are planning to work together again.
What’s more interesting is what that collaboration might be. Deadline’s Justin Kroll reported this week that McCongaughey is in negotiations to star in a Pizzolato-penned film adapting one of Mickey Spillane’s novels about private detective Mike Hammer. On the surface, this may sound like a return to True Detective territory: atmospheric, obsessive crime fiction. To anyone who’s read Spillane’s work, though, it’s anything but.
It comes down do the detective at the heart of Spillane’s work. In a 2018 essay, crime fiction writer and Spillane collaborator Max Allan Collins described Mike Hammer as “a tough guy who mercilessly executed villains and slept with beautiful, willing women.” Film critic J. Hoberman, meanwhile, noted Spillane’s conception of Hammer as “the personification of rage, a self-righteous avenger.” There are plenty of actors who come to mind who could embody that sort of blunt-force action onscreen; Tom Hardy comes to mind, for one.
But that’s also a character description at odds with McConaughey’s onscreen persona — and the roles in which he tends to do his best work. In a review of McConaughey’s The Rivals of Amziah King, which debuted at SXSW this year, Vulture’s Allison Whitmore described its leading man’s archetypal role: “a force of nature and a big talker who exudes an easygoing affection for life.” Mike Hammer may be the first of those, but the rest sounds diametrically opposed to the character, at least as he appears in Spillane’s novels.
Alternately: when Robert Aldrich adapted Spillane’s Kiss Me Deadly for the screen, he turned Hammer’s hard-nosed determination on the page into bullying and outright brutality. It’s a film that’s actively at odds with its source material — and Kiss Me Deadly was released in 1955. (It’s also a fantastic film in its own right.) But a version of Mike Hammer with the hard edges sanded off doesn’t leave you much to work with, and Aldrich’s revisionist take on the character is already an influential part of film history.
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The star couple’s Pantalones Organic Tequila turns one this weekThere are plenty of “if”s here: if the project actually comes to fruition, if McConaughey is actually playing Mike Hammer and if the tone is faithful to Spillane’s novels, among others. Kiss Me Deadly is evidence that a Spillane adaptation can be compelling without being faithful to the source material, and you can look no further than the casting of Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s take on The Long Goodbye to show how well an unconventional casting decision can pay off.
Pizzolato is a talented writer and McConaughey is a talented actor. Maybe the latter is looking to take a big swing and make a departure from his nominal onscreen presence; maybe the former has a revelatory take on a classic crime fiction character that will result in a memorable film. But for now, this is an announcement that inspires a doubletake rather than breathless anticipation.
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