Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ On Netflix, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Strange And Atmospheric Story About An Otherworldly Woman Seeking Vengance

Nicolas Winding Refn is one of those filmmakers whose work you either love or hate. You may love getting immersed in his surreal worlds and deliberate storytelling, or you may scratch your head and say, “I don’t get it.” His work is certainly not for everyone. Refn returns to his native Denmark for his latest project. Will it scratch the itch of people looking for something different?

COPENHAGEN COWBOY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Pigs feeding in tight pens. Then as we hear their loud grunting, a man strangles a woman in a dress, stockings and heels. We don’t see their faces.

The Gist: A young woman named Miu (Angela Bundalovic) arrives at a large house outside Copenhagen, run by Rosella (Dragana Milutinovic), a Serbian woman who introduces her to the other woman who live there. She’s brought Miu in because she’s heard the woman has an otherworldly ability to bring good luck. Her main goal is to get pregnant, despite her advanced age.

The women in the house are actually in the employ of her half brother Andre (Ramadan Huseini), who runs a brothel out of an out-of-the-way warehouse. Rosella has nothing but praise for Andre, who even found her a submissive husband in Sven (Per Thiim Thim). Andre thinks that he should be housing Miu so she can split time working for both of them, but Rosella wants to keep Miu for herself.

She sees Sven through a basement window having sex with one of the unwilling girls, and then Rosella wants her to sit in the bedroom while Sven has sex with her, thinking that will help her get pregnant. Most of the girls living in the basement are resentful of Miu’s presence, given that they’ve had to do countless ugly things in order to serve Andre and Rosella, and Miu seems to just sit in the garden and watch the flowers grow.

She does befriend one of the girls, Cimona (Valentina Dejanovic), who tells Miu about how she thought she was going to work for Andre as a model, but her passport was taken as she crossed the Danish border, and how she has to be one of his prostitutes in order to pay off some mysterious debt. All of the other girls have similar stories, as does Miu. Cimona knows someone who can help get them papers, but doesn’t want to risk her life to escape. Andre shows how dangerous he is when he beats the snot out of Sven for having sex with one of his girls.

But when Rosella has her period instead of getting pregnant, she banishes Miu to the basement. This is when Cimona decides the two of them should escape. She runs from the brothel that night, and Miu escapes the house. But on the road, Cimona is picked up by a mysterious man (Andreas Lykke Jørgensen), leaving Miu on her own.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Copenhagen Cowboy has the same weird, atmospheric feel as his films — Drive, Pusher, etc. — and his 2019 Amazon series Too Old To Die Young.

Our Take: There’s no doubt that if you’re not familiar with Refn’s work and you go into Copenhagen Cowboy cold, you might be frustrated by the first episode’s slow pace. In the first episode, he and the episode’s writer, Sara Isabella Jønsson Vedde, set up Miu’s story pretty clearly. In fact, the first episode’s story isn’t that hard to unwind. It’s all the other stuff that surrounds the story that may be hard for people not familiar with Refn to wrap their minds around.

Most scenes are impenetrably dark, punctuated by pops of color. The blocks of color are carried through to the clothing, including Miu’s jogging suit and the patterned pajama pants Cimona wears. There are lots of scenes where people just sit and stare at each other. Dialogue is spare. Sven is portrayed as such a pig that he makes moaning pig noises when having sex with Rosella, and we hear squeals when Andre kicks the crap out of him. Miu’s “power” is largely undefined. And the mysterious man at the end of the episode, Nicklas, screams like some sort of predatory animal.

It’s most definitely weird and slow, but Refn knows how to pull viewers into his worldview with those weird and slow moments. As Miu gets more involved in the underworld in Copenhagen, eventually meeting up with her “nemesis” Rakel (Lola Winding Refn — Nicolas’ daughter), the weird and slow should integrate better with the story. Copenhagen Cowboy is never going to be an intense psychological thriller, but if viewers stick with it, it should provide a satisfying story with a whole lot of atmosphere.

Sex and Skin: As we’ve mentioned, there’s plenty of sex and skin, but Refn doesn’t pretend to make it look at all sexy or fun.

Parting Shot: Miu is at the rendezvous spot she and Cimona agreed on, but looks around when Cimona isn’t there.

Sleeper Star: Not sure why, but we want to give this to Per Thiim Thim, because Sven is basically portrayed as a pig-like human who severely underreacts to everything, including Rosella’s assertion that she’s pregnant.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Andre questions Rosella on just what Miu’s doing, she tells him that her flowers are blooming better than they ever have. She then rattles off an endless list of the flowers in her garden. We don’t know who cared less about that, Andre or us.

Our Call: STREAM IT. For certain, Copenhagen Cowboy isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. We were on the fence about it after the first episode. But if you’re a fan of Refn’s previous work, or just want to be immersed in a mysterious world that doesn’t quite look like real life, then this show should be able to scratch that itch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.