BEFORE: A thematic jump, perhaps, from a crime film to a Western - but I wanted to send the next Birthday SHOUT-out to Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "A Prairie Home Companion"), who's turning 65 today. Plus there's the extra semi-related titles - if something is out of sight, it's missing, right? Linking from last night's film, I thought I'd have to go through the "Batman" films, since George Clooney played Batman and Tommy Lee Jones played Two-Face, but that was in different movies. (And as an extra bonus, Michael Keaton was in "Out of Sight", and another movie Batman appears tonight, plus another Two-Face...weird, 3 Batmen in 2 films) But it's easier to link Clooney to Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Babel") since they co-starred in "The Good German".
THE PLOT: In 1885 New Mexico, a frontier medicine woman forms an uneasy alliance with her estranged father when her daughter is kidnapped by an Apache brujo.
AFTER: Well, there were some plot links to this week's earlier movies, as we have a crime, a kidnapping, just taking place in frontier times. And it's about tracking down the rogue Indian kidnappers, instead of a bank robber. Am I trying to hard to make thematic connections?
But it's also about a man trying to reconnect with his daughter, and her daughters, though he hasn't seen her in decades, and she still holds a mean grudge. Tracking down his granddaughter's kidnappers offers him a shot at redemption, albeit a very difficult one. There's plenty of time on the trail for these two to work out their personal issues, though.
There's a fair amount of action, though the film is still relatively slow-paced. But it's an attempt to describe a slower, simpler time - when it took days to travel between cities, the wheels of justice turned slowly (if at all), and people had to fight just to hold on to their piece of land and their basic human rights.
The film relies just a little too much on the "Indians are weird" stereotypes, with all the hoodoo and the magic powders and the speaking with animal spirits. Same goes for the "Indians are evil" notes - haven't we seen that a few too many times?
Aside from that, the film has mostly modern sensibilities - same storyline as a film like "Taken", for example, if you ignore the time and place. And teen girls still get abducted into sex slavery today - so if the Old West was such a brutal place, what does that make our modern world?
In the end, it's about how far people will go to get a family member back, what sacrifices they're willing to make, and that rings true no matter what the setting.
Also starring Evan Rachel Wood (last seen in "The Wrestler"), Aaron Eckhart (last seen in "Erin Brockovich"), Eric Schweig (last seen in "The Last of the Mohicans") with cameos from Val Kilmer (last seen in "MacGruber"), Clint Howard (last seen in "Far and Away"), Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "The Last Supper").
RATING: 5 out of 10 rattlesnakes
If you've got a feel for how I think, you can probably predict what tomorrow's movie will be...
No comments:
Post a Comment