‘Justified’: the phenomenal neo-western with deep ties to Quentin Tarantino
The western may not be as ubiquitous as it once was, but the genre has spawned a number of intoxicating offshoots that transplanted the standard tropes and trappings to the modern era with great effect. One of the very best is Justified, the episodic crime drama that never got the flowers it deserved during its initial run on-screen, despite boasting Quentin Tarantino as a noted supporter.
Timothy Olyphant has never been better as the cool, charismatic, and laconic Raylan Givens, a federal marshal ripped right from the Old West who gets sent back to his hometown of Harlan County, Kentucky as punishment for gunning down a suspect in broad daylight. By the end of the pilot episode, he’s renewed hostilities with Walton Goggins’ deliciously Machiavellian criminal Boyd Crowder, a crackling dynamic that powers all six seasons and 78 episodes.
Adapted from Elmore Leonard’s Fire in the Hole, the connections between Justified and Tarantino run much deeper than the filmmaker’s own appreciation of the author’s work, which manifested in live-action when he transformed the novel Rum Punch into Jackie Brown.
Goggins was welcomed into Tarantino’s repertory after appearing in Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, while he made a voice cameo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the voice of the ‘Old Chattanooga Beer’, with Olyphant also part of the latter’s ensemble as real-life actor James Stacy, not to mention fellow Justified alumni Damon Herriman playing Charles Manson in the film. Fittingly, the decision to revive Justified through the sequel series City Primeval came from the set, with Tarantino as one of the driving forces.
Showrunner Michael Dinner revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he got a phone call from Olyphant during shooting, who informed the producer that after discussing City Primeval with the two-time Oscar-winning writer and director, “We thought it would make a great year of Justified.” As an acquaintance and collaborator of the leading man in addition to being a lifelong Elmore fan, Tarantino almost took his involvement to the next level.
In February 2022, it was revealed the Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs creator was in talks to direct at least one episode of City Primeval, and while it never came to pass, when the series premiered in July 2023, it offered another direct connection to his filmography by way of a surprise cameo appearance.
In the fifth episode, ‘You Good?’, Paul Calderón reprises his role as Raymond Cruz from Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, which was, of course, another Leonard adaptation. It’s also the film that features Michael Keaton playing Ray Nicolette for the second time after Jackie Brown, which means that City Primeval – and by extension Justified at large – technically takes place in the expanded Tarantino universe.
From Leonard and Nicolette to Olyphant and Goggins, the ties between Tarantino and Justified were already well-established, and the fact he was seriously considering returning to direct television for the first time since his 2005 episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation only serves to underline how closely the filmmaker and TV show have become linked with each other.
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