"Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is a truthstorian. How to explain that proudly self-applied title? A historian, but also an investigative journalist with an inherent distrust of mainstream narratives? A maker of trouble for trouble's sake? Or one of those fantasists whose home contains a huge mood board (current mood? Paranoid!) covered with photos of suspects and newspaper clippings and various strands of a conspiracy connected by pieces of string? Raybon actually has one of those. I'm a very visual thinker, he says. His scathing former business partner Wendell (Peter Dinklage) sees it differently: It's like you read one Oklahoma history book and then made a junior high collage out of it."
"This exchange is typical of the alacrity with which The Lowdown cheerfully undercuts itself. Sterlin Harjo's Tulsa noir is brilliantly elusive in tone. It allows Raybon, its nominal hero, precious little dignity. Raybon is, in many ways, a ridiculous man. His marriage is in ruins. He puts his sweet, resourceful daughter Francis in danger by mixing business and parenting. He's one of the least physically imposing renegades you'll ever meet (How does an adult with a gun get put in the trunk of a car? wonders his associate Cyrus at one point). He isn't Woodward or Bernstein, he's Jeffrey The Dude Lebowski with a sympathetic editor and a political agenda."
Lee Raybon is a self-styled truthstorian who assembles conspiracy boards and distrusts mainstream narratives. He combines historian instincts and investigative zeal with theatrics, paranoia, and an inclination to provoke. Raybon's personal life is faltering: his marriage is collapsing and his mixing of business with parenting places his daughter Francis in danger. The Lowdown balances comedy and noir, frequently undercutting its protagonist while maintaining grave stakes. The central mystery involves the influential Washberg family and their claim that their wayward son Dale took his own life, a claim that likely conceals deeper, troubling circumstances.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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