
So what we have here is a fictional revenge tale that entangles lives that, in some cases, never did cross, as Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) – aka Deadwood Dick – reconvenes his old gang, including former flame Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), to take down fearsome outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). But Samuel and his co-writer Boaz Yakin (Now You See Me, 2012’s Safe) aren’t past playing fast and loose with history themselves, albeit in less harmful ways. Many of the larger-than-life characters in The Harder They Fall are historical figures. Like Mario Van Peebles’ 1993 oater Posse, The Harder They Fall by Jeymes Samuel (aka London singer/songwriter The Bullits) looks to change things up and have a blast doing it, with its starry Black cast trading shots in thrilling sequences of stylized violence set to quality music. It’s estimated that a quarter of cowboys were Black, but you’d never know it from Hollywood westerns, which so whitewashed American history that Mel Brooks found provocative humor in having a Black man holding the reins in 1974’s Blazing Saddles. The Road’s Smit-McPhee also impresses, especially as his character grows more important in the film’s final, unexpected third. But at its heart is a brooding Cumberbatch, offering one of the shrewdest performances of his career. True, it has a tendency to meander and lands Last Night In Soho’s Thomasin McKenzie with an underwritten role.
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But there’s more to this story than jealousy and rage, as Campion drops hints about hidden love from the past that might well be a dangerous thing in cowboy country.īeautifully filmed (with New Zealand doubling for the States), The Power Of The Dog is surely Campion’s most elegant movie since The Portrait Of A Lady or even The Piano. Soon, he’s brutally haranguing Rose, who starts to self-medicate with booze, and ominously befriending Pete. When George meets and marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst), widowed mother to sensitive teen Pete (Kodi Smit-McPhee), it sends Phil into an apoplectic rage. The more bookish of the two, George manages the business while the rough-hewn Phil can more typically be found castrating cattle. Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel, its story dials back to 1920s Montana and into the world of the ranch-owning Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons). Jane Campion’s first feature since 2009’s Bright Star is a subtle spin on sibling rivalry, repressed emotions and rural living.
