Quarry (2016) is a very grievous series. The main character Mac Conway, played by Logan Marshall-Green, is a Vietnam veteran and music lover, who fond of black music and he’s the owner of a wonderful vinyl collection. The year is 1972, and he is returning to his homeland in Memphis, but even here he cannot find peace. The heavy burden of all that he committed in the war remains on his soul, he is, in fact, deeply traumatized. There’s a term called PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), so that’s what it’s about. He has a beautiful wife who somehow waited for him from Vietnam, and she’s probably the only person he wanted to return to.
And then an unpleasant guy comes to him, a certain The Broker, and makes him an offer that cannot be refused. In fact, The Broker forces Mac to do dirty work, threatening his wife’s health. The financial situation is deplorable, Conway has nothing to live on, his family risks being left homeless, but the proud Mac rejects this path of crime. However, his black army buddy gets involved… oh, he shouldn’t be doing this.
And music and love are all the good things that the main character has left, which can help him somehow forget everything that he had to do there. The soundtrack is really great, it’s the best music of the 70s. Here are Van Morrison and T.Rex and the black guys Al Green, Otis Redding, Booker T & MG’s, Albert King. And also a bit of rockabilly surf from the legendary Link Wray, naive country music, and generally enough root music. Our hero is a sensitive person with a special musical taste, and that only makes it harder for him to cope with all this.
And here in Memphis, they see him as a killing machine and call him Quarry. He has to lie to his wife about what he’s doing, but of course she finds out about it herself in the cruelest way. The magic and charm of all this music stands in stark contrast to the ongoing plot action.
“Life is by definition very difficult. But death doesn’t. Death is just such a switch”
At the end of the series, the details of the events in Kuan Tang (based on a true story in Songmi, the incident is known as My Lai Massacre) are shown, for which these soldiers are so stigmatized by hippies and other pacifists, and to tell the truth, I still want to unsee these shots and never see anything like it. This is imprinted in the memory and, unfortunately, remains there for a long time. It’s hard to see and realize this, even as a viewer, let alone the main character, who has had such terrible trials. The whole Vietnam War turns out to be a monstrous conspiracy involving drugs and a lot of money. For the sake of all this filth, human lives are being wasted, and it should be noted, the lives of very good people.
One of the directors of the project was John Hillcoat, who shot “The Proposal”, “The Road” and “The Drunkest County in the World”, music videos for Placebo, Richard Ashcroft, Bad Seeds and Nick Cave’s Grinderman, as well as the video for Johnny Cash’s “lost” song “She Used To Love Me A Lot” and on Bob Dylan’s “Visions Of Johanna” from Blonde On Blonde, Dylan’s best album of the 60s. In addition to this interesting list, he has a short film based on the game Red Dead Redemption: The Man from Blackwater. It should also be noted that Cinemax studio recorded quite a lot of musical material specifically for Quarry, it’s all on their Youtube channel. It’s a pity, of course, that the series was discontinued on the first season, apparently they thought that the continuation of this difficult dramatic story would be even harder.
The Drunkest County In the World was good, and the fact that the series was closed gives hope that it can be watched from beginning to end in a couple of days, not in a couple of months. Albert King and Booker T are generally top class. It sounds very tempting…
I liked “Proposal” and “Road” more than “District”. By the way, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis write music for Hillcoat’s films.
The soundtrack was great in the Proposal, by the way. I kind of saved something from there to the collection… Yeah, that’s right. Gun Thing and The Rider trilogy.