STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) is a young man who has dropped out of Harvard, and is now eager to find some meaning in his life. He travels to Butcher's Creek, a frontier town in Kansas, known for buffalo hunting. McDonald (Paul Raci), the local rancher, refuses to take him on, and so he finds solace in Miller (Nicolas Cage), a mysterious local ranger who is more open to chance. As the group of men embark on a treacherous mission, they find their will and sanity pushed to the very brink.
After making a sensational comeback in theatres earlier in the year, with his role as Dracula in Renfield, before this Nicolas Cage fronted this modern western, which made an impression at the Toronto Film Festival, a year earlier. Sporting a new look shaved head and beard, this is another of the stern, intense roles that he is best known for, and the gruff, world weary Miller certainly fits this description, ensuring at least this slow, lingering piece has something dynamic to it.
The western is a tough genre to commandeer in the modern age, lingering in mood and atmosphere without the more immediate action and results that modern audiences are used to, and writer/director Gabe Polsky's film abides by these convention rules fastidiously, but this applies to the good stuff as much as the less, with some reliably sweeping cinematography of the western landscape. The lead characters are engaging enough that we go along with their plight, a slow, burning descent into something like madness, but sadly the story isn't quite as engaging, a little too meandering and listless to be as great as it could.
This is a lofty film, with pretty grand ambitions that it isn't entirely capable of fulfilling, ultimately worthwhile, but too wide of the mark to really stamp its mark. ***
Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) is a young man who has dropped out of Harvard, and is now eager to find some meaning in his life. He travels to Butcher's Creek, a frontier town in Kansas, known for buffalo hunting. McDonald (Paul Raci), the local rancher, refuses to take him on, and so he finds solace in Miller (Nicolas Cage), a mysterious local ranger who is more open to chance. As the group of men embark on a treacherous mission, they find their will and sanity pushed to the very brink.
After making a sensational comeback in theatres earlier in the year, with his role as Dracula in Renfield, before this Nicolas Cage fronted this modern western, which made an impression at the Toronto Film Festival, a year earlier. Sporting a new look shaved head and beard, this is another of the stern, intense roles that he is best known for, and the gruff, world weary Miller certainly fits this description, ensuring at least this slow, lingering piece has something dynamic to it.
The western is a tough genre to commandeer in the modern age, lingering in mood and atmosphere without the more immediate action and results that modern audiences are used to, and writer/director Gabe Polsky's film abides by these convention rules fastidiously, but this applies to the good stuff as much as the less, with some reliably sweeping cinematography of the western landscape. The lead characters are engaging enough that we go along with their plight, a slow, burning descent into something like madness, but sadly the story isn't quite as engaging, a little too meandering and listless to be as great as it could.
This is a lofty film, with pretty grand ambitions that it isn't entirely capable of fulfilling, ultimately worthwhile, but too wide of the mark to really stamp its mark. ***