BEFORE: Here we go, last film for August and I'll count down the monthly stats next time. Jeez, it's been a while since I watched a Western, I had to look up what the last one was - it was "Dead Man", if you count that one as a Western. A modernist Western of sorts, but aren't they all, these days? A Western, or any period piece, often reflects more about the spirit of the times in which it was made, rather than the spirit of the times in which it's set. Right? So let's see what this one from 2015 has to say.
Michael Fassbender carries over from "Haywire".
THE PLOT: A young Scottish man travels across America in pursuit of the woman he loves, attracing the attention of an outlaw who is willing to serve as a guide.
AFTER: I think as a culture, we're slowly getting accustomed to the "truth" about the Old West, that it was a violent place and time, sure, but also that the lines between right and wrong were very poorly defined. A land of outlaws and bounty hunters, also decent people just trying to make a living, but mixed in with them were convicts and fugitives who were trying to escape their past lives and start over, or at least live anonymously without being found. Australia started as a prison colony (more on that tomorrow) but was Western America really that much different? If you believe the movies, everybody was either an ex-criminal or a future criminal. For that matter, everybody out there was kind of doomed, or about to become dead and just unaware of that fact. I'd like to think maybe the majority were just normal people trying to get by, not running from trouble or looking to make trouble, but what do I know in the end?
Like "Haywire", and many other films, this one kind of starts in the middle, with former Scotsman Jay Cavendish headed out west by horse to find his lost love, Rose Ross. Later we see the "before" via flashbacks and we learn why Rose and her father had to leave Scotland. Jay's convinced himself that Rose is just waiting for him out in the American West (umm, which happens to be a very big place, so how does he know where to go?) and he's going to find her and live out his best life with her. Jay is found by Silas, who offers to protect him on the way there, for a fee of course, but he's also figured out that Jay could lead him right to Rose's door, where he can collect two bounties, alive or dead, and that usually means dead.
They meet a variety of odd Western characters along the way, and sometimes these meetings lead nowhere (the odd trio of musicians) and sometimes they teach a valuable lesson, which is usually "don't trust anybody". In particular there's a German writer living out of a covered wagon who seems very hospitable, and also seems to know just a bit too much about the future of America. Lines like "Very soon, this will all feel like long ago" display just a bit too much insight, unless this guy is a time-traveler. Most people, even writers and philosophers, tend to live in the moment and not be aware of how future history will regard them in 100 years. He may be right, but how would he have that kind of insight? I doubt most people in the American Old West were even thinking along these lines, they were just trying to stay alive and make it work somehow.
More modernist views are reflected in the former Union soldiers killing Native Americans for no reason, a young man knowing just a bit too much about astronomy, and a bounty hunter taking advantage of the peculiar amnesiac qualities of absinthe. This character, Payne, runs a crew of bounty hunters that Silas used to be part of, and it might have been interesting to learn just a bit more about each member of that crew, they seem like fascinating folks, only there's just no time to really get to know anybody here - the film runs a tight 84 minutes, and so there's little chance for character exposition. One lesser crew member shares his back-story, something about putting up a fake wanted poster with his friend's image on it, and the dire consequences of doing that. Really, it just reinforces the overall point made here about the Old West, that it was a very violent and confusing, essentially random setting, where everything could kill you.
But still, the bounty hunter who pretends to be a priest, there could have been something interesting there, also the relationship between Rose and her Native American friend, surely there could have been a few minutes added to the film to delve a little deeper there, no? Even the German couple who is forced to rob trading posts to get by, what's up with them? It feels like maybe Tarantino could have turned this into a three-hour epic just by adding a few more flashbacks and some backstories that connected with each other in more interesting ways. But then I guess you'd just end up with "The Hateful Eight" again, right? So maybe it's for the best that this one is what it is and won't eat up more than an hour and a half of your time.
Where else are you going to see the actor who played Magneto riding slowly across the Western landscape (shot in New Zealand, though) with the actor who played Nightcrawler, leading to a showdown with the actor who played Orson Krennic & the villain from "Ready Player One"? When you think about it that way, it's all kind of surreal, right? File this one somewhere right between "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Jane Got a Gun".
Also starring Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Ben Mendelsohn (last heard in Spies in Disguise"), Caren Pistorius (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Rory McCann (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Edwin Wright, Michael Whalley (last seen in "Unbroken"), Andrew Robertt, Madeleine Sami (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows"), Brian Sergent, Bryan Michael Mills, Kalani Queypo (last seen in "The New World"), Alex Macqueen (last seen in "Downhill"), Jeffrey Thomas (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Eddie Campbell, Jon Cummings, Ken Blackburn, Karl Willetts, Brooke Williams, Stuart Martin, James Martin, Tony Croft, Stuart Bowman, Aaron McGregor
RATING: 6 out of 10 useless fenceposts
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