BEFORE: There's a new Ethan Hawke movie out about Nikolai Tesla, and if it weren't so close to the end of the year, I might be tempted to order that On Demand. But it's $6.99, and I've been spending too much on PPV lately as it is, just to have physical copies of some movies that I'd seen on streaming. But with streaming you never know just when the movies are going to disappear, but a DVD in my collection is forever, just in case I ever have time to watch anything a second time. I'll admit, it's unlikely, but maybe someday.
Anyway, since the plan is really solid to get me to Christmas this year, I can't add "Tesla", though it looks somewhat fascinating. I'll have to just put it on the secondary watchlist and circle back to it next year, when it's on premium cable or iTunes at a more reasonable price. Sorry, Ethan Hawke, but with 4 appearances in 2020 you're going to make the year-end countdown either way, so that's something.
Both Ethan Hawke AND Dane Dehaan carry over from "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets". That's a little strange, because one film's a sci-fi film set in the future, and the other is a Western set in the past. But, going by "Star Wars" rules, what's a sci-fi film if not a Western that's just set in outer space? What's a meatball sandwich but a hamburger in another form?
THE PLOT: The story of a young boy who witnesses Billy the Kid's encounter with Sheriff Pat Garrett.
AFTER: Doing what I do, linking films the way I do (which, as far as I can determine, nobody else really does) I sometimes get to see these little patterns that maybe nobody else notices. Two actors carrying over from one film to another has happened many times for me - it's the kind of thing where I might then check to see if the two films have the same director (they don't) or maybe the same casting director (again, nope) but in this case it just seems like a coincidence. But then there's the fact that this Western shares three cast members with the 2016 remake of "The Magnificent Seven" - did someone film this one right after that one, while those actors were still dressed up like cowboys?
Logistically, now I want to know how this whole crazy moviemaking process works - is there a fake Western town somewhere that is maintained near Hollywood, just for this purpose? Does someone have a call sheet that they used on the last Western, and do they just phone everybody they used before and tell them to get back in practice riding horses? That can't be how it works, because these actors work on a lot of different films, in many different genres and locations, and if they kept using the same fake Western town in multiple movies, eventually the sharper-eyed people in the audience would start to recognize the same buildings from movie to movie. Now I have to double-check the IMDB - "The Magnificent Seven" show on location in Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana and one spot in Colorado - while the only shooting location listed for "The Kid" is Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Well, OK, both films shot in Santa Fe, so there's that. Vincent D'Onofrio directed "The Kid" so maybe while shooting "The Magnificent Seven" he got inspired to direct a Western, and remembered the wonderful scenery around Santa Fe, anything's possible. I'll have to just put a pin in this and leave it alone, unless I can learn more about this film's production somewhere.
Instead I'll compare & contrast this with "The Ballad of Lefty Brown", which I watched last week, and which was filmed in Montana, not New Mexico. That film had an unusual Western hero, someone who's imperfect and a bit of a screw-up, but who is forced to attempt something heroic when his friend is killed. "The Kid" follows a different tact entirely, focusing more on Billy the Kid and a teenager named Rio who crosses his path. But there's also Pat Garrett, and he's the traditional "hero" in a Billy the Kid movie, yet he's still got some of Lefty Brown in him - he's been around, seen it all, and he doesn't necessarily label things by "good" or "evil", he realizes that sometimes killing is necessary and therefore "right", even though in most cases it tends to fall into the category of "wrong". In both films, the Old West was perhaps much more complicated than the films of the 1940's and 1950's would have us believe.
'The Ballad of Lefty Brown" fell back on the old Western movie staple of railroad construction and the corrupt politicians who depended on it, and there's none of that here in "The Kid", thankfully. Instead we're back on Billy the Kid, notorious bank robber and killer, though we never see him rob a bank here, we meet him while he and his cohorts are hiding out while being pursued by Garrett. And there's no need or room for corrupt politicians in this film, either, because we've got Billy the Kid (aka William Bonney, aka Henry McCarty).
The tactic here seems to be to present Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett as something akin to opposite sides of the same coin, for example we hear both men relate stories about the first man they each killed. Garrett killed a man named Joe Briscoe while they were hunting buffalo, but owned up to his crime and turned himself in to authorities, who declined to prosecute him. Billy the Kid got into an argument with a man named William Cahill in a saloon, who had called Billy a "pimp", then Billy called Cahill a "son of a bitch" and shot him during a struggle. Billy the Kid fled, was apprehended, then escaped and fled again - therein lies the difference between the two men.
Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett were also former friends, or at least acquaintances - this film suggests they "grew up" together, but that's admittedly a little unclear. (Billy was born in New York City, Garrett was born in Alabama, so I'm not sure where they first encountered each other, and for how long. Garrett was nine years older, so it's hard to see how they could have grown up together, and Wikipedia's a little short on the details here.
But this much is true - Garrett was determined to track down Billy the Kid, and became sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, and also got a U.S. Marshal's commission, so he could track him across county lines. Garrett's posse cornered The Kid and his companions at a place called Stinking Springs, they killed one man and captured the others. Garrett's men took the criminals to Fort Sumner and then Las Vegas (not the one in Nevada), where an angry mob wanted to kill Billy the Kid, before traveling to Santa Fe. On April 13, 1881, Billy the Kid was sentenced to hang a month later, but two weeks later, Billy the Kid escaped from the top floor of the Lincoln Courthouse, while Garrett was out of town, and one deputy had taken the other prisoners across the street for lunch. He pretended to need to use the outhouse, then on the way back in he beat the remaining deputy with his cuffs, sawed off his leg irons with an axe, grabbed a loaded shotgun and shot the other deputy across the street. Then he got a horse and rode out of town.
With an increased bounty on Billy the Kid's head ($500!) Garrett caught up with Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner three months later. The depiction in the film of Garrett shooting Billy seems fairly close to the standard version posted on Wikipedia, but they both may be based on the book that Garrett wrote after the fact, to explain how it all happened. If he hadn't done that, it's possibly that history might have mistakenly regarded Billy as a hero, Garrett had seen that the stories were leaning in that direction, so he set out to set the record straight.
The addition here of the teenage character, Rio, is no doubt intended as a stand-in for the audience. Rio and his sister were on the run from their uncle, after Rio killed their father, who had beaten their mother to death. Uncle Grant blamed and attacked Rio, who managed to stab Grant in the face, sending both teens on the run. While on their way to Santa Fe, the two stay in an abandoned shack, which then becomes a temporary hideout for Billy the Kid and his men - but Rio forms a bond with Billy, and then later a different one with Pat Garrett, essentially he's got two role models, one a charming, ruthless killer and the other a gritty, world-weary lawman. Billy and Pat represent two different paths that his life can take, and his actions and decisions could determine which type of person he'll become as an adult. In another way, I'm reminded here of the film "Platoon", where we see the Vietnam War through the eyes of a new soldier, and he's under the command of Sgt. Barnes and Sgt. Elias, two very different men with different attitudes about the war. (Another coincidence, there are two actors here who were also in "Full Metal Jacket", Vincent D'Onofrio and Adam Baldwin, like "Platoon" it's a film where we see the horrors of war through the eyes of new recruits.)
Obviously, there was no Rio in the Billy the Kid/Pat Garrett story - but I think it's an interesting method to view the Old West, through the eyes of a 15-year old who hasn't really figured out who he's going to be, or who can be trusted along the way. This works as a sort of coming-of-age story along with a moral tale, but not really as an action film, because other than the capture, escape and shooting of Billy the Kid, not a lot really happens. While reading up on Billy the Kid on Wikipedia, I learned about what came to be called the Lincoln County War, and honestly, that sounds like a much more exciting topic for a Western film than Billy the Kid's last few months does. This is more of a character piece, but one that nearly put me to sleep a couple of times.
Also starring Jake Schur, Leila George (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Chris Pratt (last heard in "Onward"), Adam Baldwin (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Keith Jardine (last seen in "Bird Box"), Chris Bylsma, Clint Obenchain (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Chad Dashnaw, Charlie Chappell, Joseph Santos, Hawk D'Onofrio, Jenny Gabrielle (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden"), Tait Fletcher (ditto), Ben Dickey, Diana Navarrete (last seen in "Hostiles"), Samantha Zajarias, Douglas Bennett (last seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds"), Stafford Douglas (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Rose Cordova.
RATING: 5 out of 10 bordello customers
No comments:
Post a Comment