Now Deputy Sheriff in his new town, Turner seems to be finally escaping his past and creating a new life for himself. That is, until a routine traffic stop results in a young man being sprung from jail, a brutal assault on the Sheriff and Turner risking everything in his wild pursuit.

I’m setting this aside at 54%. I can’t sit with it any more. There is a story here, but there isn’t a plot. The story is a slice-of-life sort of thing, and an unpleasant life it is. 

Turner’s life is filled with trauma, current and remembered, that summon in him an unwished for ease with violence. He is a man who is, to paraphrase his own words, “worn down but not yet wore out”. He has acquired a patina of dull acceptance of human cruelty and stupidity that could lead to despair if he didn’t combat it with dark humour and clumsy attempts at home-spun philosophising. 

To me this feels like a nighmareish, Southern Gothic version of a set of Lake Woebegone tales.  It’s not taking me anywhere except into darkness, and, having endured 160 minutes of it, I’ve had more than enough of that.