BEFORE: The original plan was to link from "The Fall Guy" to "Kraven the Hunter" via Aaron Taylor-Johnson, great, knock off the only other Marvel movie that I haven't seen. From there I could link to "Thelma" on Hulu and "Nickel Boys", which I just got off cable a month ago. There was a big Oscar campaign for "Nickel Boys", I recall. Then I'd get to the start of my planned Father-themed films for June, no worries. But that schedule was packed, no chance for a day off here and there, and also I had a feeling that "Kraven" would help me out in October, as it connected to a bunch of different horror movies on my list. But I couldn't prove that I could definitely use it THIS October, and I didn't want to wait until next year to watch that film.
So, I got into my horror movie list and beefed up some of the cast lists, shuffled some things around, and determined that yes, "Kraven" can certainly help me, I've got a chain of 19 or 20 horror films that it can help make. I'll basically have to take the horror chain I was planning and cut it in half, use another chain of 7 films and use "Kraven" to connect to the back-half of that first chain, then that gives me the option to add "Smile" and "Smile" 2 at the end, but I think maybe that's the way to go, to clear the maximum number of films from the list. The first half of that old plan can then be saved for next year, and it connects to the "Final Destination" and "Candyman" franchises, we'll see if that's the move I want to make in 2026.
I found that this other film on my list, "Cut Bank", easily takes the place of "Kraven" and the other two films, it just skips me ahead by connecting to a film three spaces away, and I'll get to Fathers Day material a bit sooner, line up with the actual holiday better, and give myself a chance to take a day off here and there. Perfect plan, I think. Teresa Palmer carries over from "The Fall Guy" instead.
And as a bonus I get to send a Birthday SHOUT-out to Bruce Dern, born June 4, 1936 - so he's turning 89 today!
THE PLOT: A murder caught on camera pulls a young man into a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse.
AFTER: It's another very weird movie today, this one feels like it wanted to be like the "Fargo" movie but ended up feeling just like a lost episode from one of the seasons of the "Fargo" TV series, none of which are set in North Dakota, by the way.
The premise of this film is that a young man in Cut Bank, Montana, sets up a scheme to collect reward money from the U.S. government by reporting an act of violence on a postal carrier, as he wants to use the money to move out of town with his girlfriend, maybe go to California and open up a car body shop. However, his father needs constant medical care, and his girlfriend wants to win the Cut Bank annual beauty pageant, so there are a few things that seem to be keeping them stuck in town, besides a lack of money. That's kind of like NITPICK POINT #1.
The scheme involves filming his girlfriend making a promotional video for the town (which, like most people don't really do, unless somehow that's connected to the pageant entry) and during the making of that video, he arranges for an elderly mailman to appear to be shot and killed in the background, creating something akin to the Zapruder tape, but for a postal carrier. Somehow he gets the mailman, Georgie Wits, to go along with this, maybe they'll split the reward money, but that's not really clear. This means that Georgie would probably have to leave town, since Cut Bank is a small town where everybody knows everybody else, so NITPICK POINT #2, what was the plan here? Georgie can't hide in a trailer on the junkyard lot for the rest of his life, the second he goes into town then everyone will know he's alive.
The town sheriff sees the video and declares this is the first-ever murder in Cut Bank, which, you know, seems a bit hard to believe considering how many murders there are in the U.S. each year, even in small towns. That's NITPICK POINT #3, although maybe he meant this was the first murder in town since he became sheriff, which, OK, might be possible. But there's no body, plus what happened to the mail truck and all the mail it was carrying? When a local weirdo taxidermist shows up at the post office inquiring about a parcel he was expecting, I thought that maybe this was part of the scheme, perhaps he was expecting something very valuable to arrive by mail, as the film makes note of the fact that the fake murderer (a very large, mute Native American apparently on loan from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") was supposed to burn the mail, and he didn't do that.
This led me to think that maybe this was part of the scheme, to keep the valuable thing that was in the mail. No, but that's not a red herring either, the taxidermist is really the fly in the ointment here, he starts to do the detective work that the sheriff isn't doing, like tracking down who in town wears very large shoes that would match a footprint, and finding the large Native American. The sheriff does seem capable, he's just going about solving the case in a different way, and eventually everyone's going to meet up at the end, just you wait and see.
A postal inspector from Washington DC arrives in town, and naturally he wants to see the body of the murdered mailman, and this is maybe where the scheme (and the whole movie plot) kind of falls apart. Did Dwayne really think that he could fake a murder and not have to eventually supply a body to prove it? Did he not think that further proof would be required? And if the reward would have been given just for proof of violence (not murder) against a mail carrier, why not just have Georgie get fake beaten up, instead of fake murdered? That's my NITPICK POINT #4, and really, that's one too many.
Milton, the weird taxidermist (and apparently Michael Stuhlbarg got this role because Stephen Root wasn't available) figures out the scheme first, and tracks down Georgie and then Dwayne in turn, and he's willing to go to some pretty far lengths to get that parcel of his. He kidnaps both Dwayne and his girlfriend Cassandra, who DID win the beauty pageant, and drives them to the storage facility where the mail was being kept. Oh, he gets his parcel, and thankfully we all do get to find out what it was (eventually) but the answer isn't very comforting, and lets just say that Milton doesn't get to enjoy it for very long.
That's the real point here, I guess, that fulfillment and enjoyment don't last very long, so we really need to take a minute and enjoy them when we find them. Dwayne and Cassandra DO get to leave town, but that reward money is kind of off the table. And the postal inspector does get the dead body he was looking for, again it's just not in the way that he expected. The sheriff and Cassandra's father go to some extreme lengths to make all the pieces fit, and really the movie does that too. The plot had to be bent over backwards to make some kind of resolution possible - and as always, your experience may vary, you might find the resolution to your liking, or you may realize that it's so improbable as to be essentially impossible.
Directed by Matt Shakman
Also starring Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "Beckett"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Places in the Heart"), Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "The Last Song"), Billy Bob Thornton (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Oliver Platt (last seen in "Hope Springs"), Joyce Robbins, Christian Distefano, Aiden Longworth, Chilton Crane (last seen in "50/50"), David Burke, King Lau (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Stephen Hair, Len Crowther, Holly Turner, Matthew Brennan, Mandie Vredegoor, Ty Olsson (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Sonya Salomaa (last seen in "Watchmen"), Graem Beddoes (last seen in "Horns"), Howie Miller, Alexy Rain-Kootenay, Brian Copping, Tom Carey (last seen in "Forsaken"), Damian Chao, Mikaela Cochrane, Peyton Kennedy (last seen in "The Captive"), Chris Krueger, Em Siobhan McCourt, Carlee McManus (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"),
RATING: 4 out of 10 empty beer cans
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