People really don’t talk enough about how awesome Rachel McAdams’ lethal knife skills were in the second season of “True Detective.”
I’m a huge “True Detective” fan. Obviously the first season was much better than the second, but Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson might have created the single greatest season of television ever. People want to measure the second season by the same standards, and that’s ridiculous. Judge them separately and you’ll see that the second season is also very solid.
Do you know what one of the coolest parts of the entire second season was? McAdams as Ani Bezzerides and her ability with a blade. I know just a shade about knife combat, and the show got her movements very accurate.
Here’s an example. Notice how McAdams moves the knife from bottom to top as she holds it blade up. This is textbook knife combat.
Movies and shows routinely screw this up. They have people wielding knives with the blade down and a throwing motion of top to bottom. That’s only a real thing in Hollywood, and it has essentially no value in an actual situation where your life depends on a knife at close range.
Fans got to see this skills come to use in the show when she literally gutted a dude.
That knife scene is one of my all-time favorite television moments. It happened in a matter of seconds, and the guy was in a puddle of his own blood, which is exactly how those knife wounds would play out.
It’s a shame that everybody has got of tried to forget about the second season, and because of that we don’t get to shine a light on what an incredible performance McAdams put on. It was incredible.
I also dare anybody to tell me that McAdams wasn’t sexy as hell as a cop with a dark side. She most certainly was. Everything about the character was incredible, and the knife skills certainly didn’t hurt.