Place of Bones, Starring Heather Graham

Pandora is a frontier widow. That means she is a survivor, by definition. The homestead she shares with her willful teen daughter Hester looks dangerously secluded, but they have their faith. They are also surprisingly resourceful, but they need more guns in Audrey Cummings’ Place of Bones, which releases today on DVD.

They might live in the middle of nowhere, but trouble still finds Pandora and Hester. First, they hear gunshots. The next day, Hester stumbles over Calhoun’s bleeding body near her late father’s gravesite. Pandora manages to stop his bleeding, but his gangrene-infested leg needs to go. Of course, she confiscates his bullets first.

Slightly perturbed by the amputation, Calhoun assumes Pandora intends to steal his saddle-bags stuffed with cash, which he himself stole from his fellow bank-robbing bandits. However, she has no desire for blood money. Instead, she is rightly concerned someone will come looking for it—and Calhoun must reluctantly admit she is not wrong.

That someone is Bear John, along with three of his henchmen. Calhoun already killed three others, including Bear’s idiot brother. Unfortunately, he and his tracker, Cherokee Jack (who isn’t really Cherokee), are probably about as dangerous and lowdown as outlaws get. Eventually, Pandora will have give Calhoun his gun back, so they can try to hold off the killers together, but it will take them a while to work up to that level of trust.

The first 95% of Place of Bones consists of serviceable but rather unremarkable revisionist Western material. However, there is such a shocking twist ending, it seems strange the film has not generated more online buzz. Indeed, Cummings (who also helmed the pedal-to-the-metal horror film, She Never Died) and screenwriter Richard Taylor so scrupulously avoid telegraphing the big reveal, it genuinely surprises—even stuns.

Regardless, Heather Graham is surprisingly intense and forceful as Pandora, even though Cummings and the makeup department appear conflicted whether to accentuate her magazine-cover image or glam her down for the sake of gritty naturalism. Essentially, they split the difference, presenting her as impossibly clean for a dirt farmer, decked out in a primly schoolmarmish wardrobe.

DC Showcase: Jonah Hex

Nobody cowboys harder than Jonah Hex. The scarred bounty-hunter is so hardnosed, it is practically a super-power. The live-action movie did not do him justice, but this animated short did. Once again, it is an example of how DC straight-to-DVD animated films are vastly superior to both Marvel and DC live-action tent-poles. On the day of what is sometimes listed as his in-world birthday (11/1), get a taste of his cool steeliness and hot lead in Joaquim Dos Santos’s 12-minute short, DC Showcase: Jonah Hex.

In the 1980s, Jonah Hex was just about the last western comic book title that still cranked out new issues. However, there was a non-fantastical macabre vibe to Hex’s world that was far from traditional. Joe R. Lansdale’s screenplay captures that sensibility perfectly.

Hex soon blows into town hot on the heels of Red Doc, an outlaw wanted dead or alive. Unfortunately for Doc, he will soon be stone cold, thanks to the seductive treachery of Madame Lorraine, the proprietress of the salon and upstairs areas, where, you know. She is no Miss Kitty, that’s for sure. Madame Lorraine makes a practice of killing and looting horny drifters like Red Doc. She assumes she can do the same with Hex. Right, good luck with that.

The Outlaws, Co-Starring Eric Roberts as Bloody Tom

What is the representative national food of Finland? Ruisleipa rye bread? Does that make this a Ruisleipa Western? Regardless, even though it was shot in the U.S., this film might have more Finnish crew in its closing credits than any other Western you might have seen. It also has Eric Roberts as a villain. That is definitely something. Bloody Tom waits for the third act to make his grand entrance, but he lives up to his name in Joey Palmroos (Finnish) & Austen Paul’s The Outlaws, which releases Friday on VOD.

Four hard-bitten outlaws just pulled off a daring train robbery, but the getaway will be the tricky part. They ditched their horses to mislead the posse, but they might just kill each other waiting for the boss, Bloody Tom, to bring fresh mounts. Or maybe they won’t. Palmroos, Paul, and co-screenwriter Anders Holmes (Danish) show viewers what could have happened, in between the various characters’ flashbacks.

John “JT” Tulsa, whom nobody really believes hails from Oklahoma, has good reason to keep his past secret. Henriette Parker is probably the craziest of the bunch, but we come to understand how life as a female outlaw took its toll on her emotional stability. William Higgins is supposedly the other “Wild Bill,” but he too carries a lot of baggage. Despite his prosthetic leg, Boone Collins is a creepy sociopath, so yeah for representation.

As B-movie Westerns go, the generically titled Outlaws is appealingly gritty and competently executed. It leans a little too heavily on the flashbacks, but whatever. Roberts is reliably and charismatically crafty as Bloody Tom, like you would expect. Celeste Wall and Jonathan Peacy are also both appropriately fierce and nutty.

Obviously, Outlaws is all about the villains—its right there in the title. However, Dallas Hunt offers a nicely understated counterpoint, as Tulsa, who is the closest thing the film has to a good guy. Plus, Sterling Scott has some interesting moments as the Preacher in Tulsa’s flashbacks.

Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt

There was no shortage of violence in the Old West, but there was also a lot of quiet loneliness. There are plenty of both in Viggo Mortensen’s new revisionist western, but the lonely moments are safer. No matter how revisionist it might be, revenge still needs to be taken in director-screenwriter-composer-co-star Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The title has a spaghetti western ring to it, but the vibe is more Heaven’s Gate. Just about every man Vivienne Le Coudy meets is an exploiter, except Holger Olsen. That is why she ran off with him so quickly. Unfortunately, we know it will end tragically, because the film starts with Olsen mourning Le Coudy at her death bed. The ensuing flashbacks explain why Olsen will be gunning for Weston Jeffries, the violently entitled son of wealthy Alfred Jeffries, who runs the nearest town with the brazenly corrupt Mayor Rudolph Schiller.

As a veteran in his native Denmark, Olsen believed he could enlist for the $100 bonus, fight for his new country, and return home after a relatively short time. Le Coudy is rightly skeptical, but she lets him go anyway. Unfortunately, that leaves her to fend for herself in the lawless town. Of course, the years drag by, until Olsen finally returns to meet Vincent, the son he never knew he “had.” Despite the circumstances, Olsen and the little boy quickly develop a rapport, so the soldier-turned-sheriff will always protect his son, even after the sins done to Le Coudy cause further physical decline and death.

Dead Don’t Hurt is about as slow as a western can get and still be a western. It still has all the elements, particularly the striking landscape—mostly shot on-location in Durango, Mexico. Mortensen can definitely play the strong silent type, so he perfectly cast himself as Olsen. As usual, he slow-burns like nobody’s business.

Yet, Vicky Krieps is the true lead as Le Coudy. She brings a lot of strength and sensitivity to the part. Watching her work in The Dead Don’t Hurt gives real sense of the dangers women faced on the frontier. However, it is worth remembering conditions for women weren’t much better in the Old World—and often they were worse. Ask the women of the shtetls about the Cossacks. Wherever you were, life in the late 19^th Century was just brutish and short.

Mario Van Peebles’ Outlaw Posse

There is a relatively new trope in revisionist Westerns, in which a grizzled gunslinger blows into a town founded by freedmen that exudes contemporary values of tolerance and diversity. Of course, he comes to respect their ways, even though he must revert to his bad old habits to defend their dreams. You definitely find this template in the Django series, the Refuge graphic novel, and now again in this film. At least the hard-bitten “Chief” will do his best to keep his shootouts out-of-town in Mario Van Peebles’ Outlaw Posse, which opens in select theaters this Friday.

Shortly after the Civil War, Chief and Angel hijacked a shipment of gold intended to pay reparations to former slaves. They had the usual falling out, resulting in Angel losing both his share of the gold and one hand. Shrewdly, Chief stashed the loot on reservation land, where most white outlaws fear to tread. However, Angel remains determined to re-appropriate the gold and sever one of Chief’s mitts in retribution. For leverage, he abducts Malindy, the wife of Chief’s estranged son, Decker.

To save her, Decker must ingratiate himself into Chief’s gang, now consisting of the fatherly Carson, the young Southpaw (both of whom are white), the knife-wielding femme fatale Queeny, and the minstrel-performer, Spooky. Chief is due to reclaim the gold at the time he and the actual tribal chief agreed upon, but to get there, they must travel through the freedmen’s community led by his former riding mate, Horatio, who isn’t as dead as Chief had heard (that is a common phenomenon in Outlaw Posse).

Weirdly, one of the most entertaining things about Outlaw Posse is the wealth of colorful character actor cameos, like Neal McDonough and the truly great M. Emmet Walsh, who appear in the prologue (which could stand alone as separate short) and then only reappear briefly in a dream sequence. Regardless, they are both perfectly cast. There is also Edward James Olmos popping up as a general store proprietor and Joseph Culp (Corman’s Dr. Doom) as a crooked sheriff. Plus, Cedric the Entertainer plays it relatively straight as newly enlightened Horatio.

Outlaw Posse does not appear to be linked to Van Peebles’ Posse from 1993, but he clearly remembered his way around horses and six-shooters. Frankly, there is no “posse” in Outlaw Posse, so the title seems deliberately misleading. Regardless, as Chief, he is definitely cool, in a steely, world weary kind of way. He can still carry a movie.

Calamity Jane (and Wild Bill)

They were the great did-they-or-didn’t-they question of the Old West. There have always been plenty of stories that claim Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary) and Wild Bill Hickok were a romantic couple and even married, including the assertions of their supposed daughter. Evidence suggests they never tied the knot, but they certainly traveled in the same Deadwood circles. Regardless, Canary would not have taken kindly to the cold-blooded shooting of Hickok, her whatever. In fact, she sets out for some frontier justice in Terry Miles’ Calamity Jane, which releases today on VOD.

Rather awkwardly, Calamity Jane was behind bars for some disorderly conduct during Hickok’s fateful poker game with the no-good, cowardly Jack McCall. Honest Sheriff Mason went to great lengths to deliver her there safely, despite an attempted hold-up of their stage. Frankly, he needed Calamity Jane’s assistance, so he is favorably disposed towards her. Nevertheless, when she slips away during an escape orchestrated by “Abigail,” a psychotic prisoner scheduled to be hung in the morning, Mason forms a posse to capture both her and the fugitive McCall. It is a sad posse of three, including him, but they have grit.

Naturally, McCall enlists Abigail’s gang to deliver him to his well-heeled brother’s mining camp, beyond the reach of the law. However, Calamity Jane gets some help of her own from the undertaker, who usually gets a free pass through outlaw territory. You know how those bodies start to smell.

Emily Bett Rickards does a solid job talking tough and shooting straight as the title gunslinger. However, it its is the colorful supporting cast that really elevates the movie. Tim Rozon’s Sheriff Mason is almost as bad as Calamity Jane, but he also sells the lawman’s tragic backstory. Priscilla Faia is all kinds of dirty and nasty as Abigail. Despite his name over the title on the key art, Stephen Amell has limited screen time as Hickok, but his is appropriately flamboyant as the reckless legend.

Butcher’s Crossing, Starring a Bald Nic Cage

For the American Buffalo, Miller was a one-man extinction event. Somehow, the species survived him, but it was not for a lack of bloodlust. Not surprisingly, he finds the Great Western Plains increasingly sparse of prey, so he sets off on an ambitious hunting expedition. His party encounters some serious karma in Gabe Polsky’s Butcher’s Crossing, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Will Andrews is taking a break from his Harvard studies to find adventure on the Frontier. He has a particular bee in his bonnet spurring him to find a genuine buffalo hunt. This is a really bad idea, as J.D. McDonald, a crusty pelt dealer who once knew Andrews’ preacher father, emphasizes in no uncertain terms. Nevertheless, he has his heart set on it, so he unwisely funds the mysterious Miller’s proposed expedition to a hidden Colorado valley, where the you-know-what supposedly roam.

Miller is visibly erratic and he becomes borderline psychotic when discussing buffalo. Yet, Andrews is perversely drawn to him, partly because the dynamics of their party are so dysfunctional. Charley Hodge, Miller’s cook and wagon master is devout in a way that emphasizes divine retribution, which puts him at odds with the crude pelt-skinner, Fred Schneider, who goes out of his way to push and prod Andrews and Hodge. When the weather turns bitter, the tensions within the expedition steadily rise.

Polsky and Liam Satre-Meloy’s adaptation of the novel written by the late John Edward Williams (a longtime professor at the University of Denver, go Pioneers!), lacks the kind of incisive bite viewers will hope for. As a director, Polsky is not fully capable of corralling all the tension Nic Cage’s crazy behavior generates. However, if you have always wondered what it would be like to see Cage portray Col. Kurtz or Captain Ahab, this film will give viewers a pretty good idea.

Michael Jai White’s Outlaw Johnny Black

You can take the kid out of the tent revival, but you can’t take the tent revival out of the kid. Lord knows, Johnny Black tried. Like all legit gunslingers, he has dedicated his life to killing the man who shot his Pa. He thought he turned his back on his father’s old time religion, but it will creep up on him again when he is forced to impersonate a preacher in Michael Jai White’s Outlaw Johnny Black, which opens Friday in theaters.

Black learned to handle firearms from his trick-shooting Army veteran revival-preaching father, but Bullseye Black’s lessons in turning the other cheek never did take. After young Johnny Black watched outlaw gang-leader Brett Clayton gun down his father out of pure racist spite, the boy vowed to avenge him. It has been a few years, or decades, but he is still vowing.

At this point, Black’s gun-toting ways have made him an outlaw too, even though his targets all have it coming. His latest scrape with the law ended with a very narrow escape, but the desert would have killed him were it not for the intercession of the Rev. Percival Fairman (and the Lord, according to the preacher). Shortly thereafter, Black wrongly assumes Fairman dies in a skirmish with a Native tribe (yes, really), so he impersonates Fairman with his new flock in Hope Springs and with his unseen correspondence fiancée, Bessie Lee. To complicate matters, Fairman turns up very much alive and Black starts to fall for Bessie Lee’s sister, Jessie Lee, the strategist behind the town’s legal resistance to evil land baron Tom Sheally.

White, who stars, directed, and co-wrote OJB with his Black Dynamite partner Byron Minns, largely sets out to do for Blaxploitation movies what their previous spoof did to the tropes of blaxploitation in the tradition of Shaft and Coffy. However, Outlaw Johnny Black is much more successful because it is less shticky, more grounded, and less didactic. Weirdly enough, the themes of faith and forgiveness also connect to a surprising extent. This film just works, quite well in fact.

Of course, White is a total badass as Black. Initially, he definitely puts an emphasis on the “anti” in anti-hero, but he slowly humanizes the gunslinger, while showing off his first-class martial arts chops. Frankly, he makes Black’s arc more compelling than most of those seen in “serious” 1970s revisionist Westerns.

Surrounded

Mo Washington is part “Little Joe” Monahan (who was the inspiration for the Suzy Amis western, The Ballad of Little Jo) and part Mary Fields, the legendary black old west mail-carrier, who also famously toted a shotgun. Washington has passed for a man since she enlisted in the Buffalo Soldiers. She has ambitions to settle down and build a community, but killing keeps following her in Anthony Mandler’s Surrounded, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Washington has a gold claim and a dream, but every step of her journey to Colorado is fraught with peril. New Mexico will be where the sagebrush really hits the fan. Despite having a ticket, the racist shotgun-rider forces her to sit on back jump seat of the coach. Wheeler, a lawman passenger, is maybe a little sympathetic to “him,” as he assumes her to be, but only so to an extent.

Nevertheless, when the notorious Tommy Walsh Gang attacks the coach, Wheeler is happy to have Washington’s steady Remington on his side. With her help, they overcome the bandits and capture Walsh, but at a high cost. The coach is lost and perhaps Washington’s dreams with it. Bizarrely, Wheeler leaves Washington to guard Walsh, because holding a gun on a white guy, even bandit like Walsh, is such a comfortable place for him (her) to be in 1870 New Mexico. However, Walsh can see her for who she is. Thus begins a long night of verbal sparring.

Despite the High Plains Drifter-style hat, Letitia Wright cannot convincingly pass for a guy. Yet, weirdly, Surrounded makes that a virtue, emphasizing how “unseen” Washington moves through life. Walsh’s marginal status gives him a small degree of understanding, which makes his temptations and mind-games very effective drama.

The Wind & the Reckoning: A Hawaiian Western

Did make sense for the post-monarchy Hawaiian government to quarantine indigenous leprosy patients at the colony on Molokai, despite the disease’s low level of transmission? Before you answer, review your positions on Covid mandates and lockdowns. In light of the last three years, it is illuminating to revisit the Leper War of 1893. Ko’olau, the Hawaiian cowboy previously immortalized by Jack London, fights for his family and his way of life in David L. Cunningham’s The Wind & the Reckoning, which opens this Friday in New York.

Both Ko’olau and his son Kaleimanu have contracted the disease, but not his wife Pi’ilani. Unfortunately, she would not be permitted to accompany her husband and son to the colony, where all marriages are declared void on arrival. It is clear Sheriff Stoltz and his lowlife deputies consider this a side-benefit to the quarantine policy when they arrive for Ko’olau and Kaleimanu, because Pi’ilani is quite pretty. However, neither Ko’olau or his Yankee “Uncle” Eben Sinclair will submit, but their violent resistance makes the father, mother, and son fugitives.

A party of soldiers follow Ko’olau into Kalalau Valley, along with Marshal Edward G. Hitchcock, a holdover from the days of the Kingdom, who has little enthusiasm or stomach for the man hunt. According to the historical record, they were also accompanied by a Board of Health rep, but that character was dropped for the film (perhaps out of fears of potential Fauci-esque echoes).

Regardless, Wind & Reckoning is inescapably timely. Throughout the film, viewers should ask themselves is this all about health or control—and which outbreak are we talking about? Sadly, health crises are often used as an excuse to curtail civil liberties. Cunningham and screenwriter John Fusco clearly argue that was the case in Kalalau.

It is also a solidly executed revisionist western. Jason Scott Lee (from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and Rapa Nui) is a credible strong, silently steely rifleman. Likewise, Lindsay Marie Anuhea Watson is fiercely protective and keenly sensitive as Pi’ilani. Arguably, Johnathon Schaech’s portrayal of Marshal Hitchcock makes him the film’s most complex and conflicted character. The late Patrick Gilbert also contributes a lot of heart and poignancy as the profoundly decent Sinclair. Plus, action star Ron Yuan adds his big presence to the film as Lee, the soldiers’ literal howitzer bearer.

The Last Manhunt: The Legend of Willie Boy

Maybe Willie Boy was here longer than we were led to believe. He died at the end of the Robert Redford revisionist western, but his legend still haunts the Mojave Desert around Ruby Mountain. He holds the distinction of being the final fugitive hunted down by an Old West posse. Yet, like Redford’s Deputy Cooper, Sheriff Wilson has little enthusiasm for capturing Boy in Christian Camargo’s The Last Manhunt, which opens tomorrow in New York.

There were only fifth-cousins (in 1909), but William Johnson was deadest against his daughter Carlotta’s relationship with Boy. They defied his prohibition, so a confrontation led to a scuffle and Johnson’s fatal gunshot. Wilson wanted to just ignore the whole thing and punt it to the tribal authorities, but the crime was committed in his jurisdiction. Inconveniently, Pres. Taft had an official visit planned, so Wilson has to mount a posse to make a show of maintaining the peace. However, the Chemehuevi scouts he recruits are friends of Johnson, who are out for revenge.

Of course, as vengeance-seekers, they should probably dig two graves and all that, which certainly turns out to be the case. Boy knows the desert better than anyone, so things get pretty ugly for the posse. Unfortunately, it is difficult for Wilson to defuse the situation, because a sensationalistic reporter keeps pouring fuel on the fire.

The true story of Willie Boy is still somewhat controversial. Tell Them Willie Boy is Here was based on Harry Lawton’s “New Journalism novel,” whose veracity has been somewhat questioned in recent years, but both films are largely sympathetic to Boy. The truth is probably somewhere in between the two.

However, Last Manhunt is an unusually draggy film. Camargo, who portrays Wilson with understated grit and complicity, has severe pacing issues as a director. This might be the slowest “Western” since Power of the Dog. Executive producer Jason Momoa’s big floating head on the poster is also a bit of a bait-and-switch. He only turns up occasionally as Wilson’s largely-assimilated Native crony, Big Jim. At least the “Big” part is true.

Toshiro Mifune at Film Forum: Red Sun

It is often referred to as a Spaghetti western, but since it was filmed in Spain by a British director, there must be some Manchego and Stilton in that pasta. Ramen too, thanks to Toshiro Mifune. He inadvertently helped establish spaghetti westerns, since he starred in Yojimbo, which was remade as A Fistful of Dollars (and sort of Django). Therefore, it was only fair that Mifune got to star in one. It is okay as western go, but the cast is stacked with legends. Mifune will have his vengeance while preserving his honor in Terence Young’s Red Sun, which screens Wednesday as part of Film Forum’s Mifune retrospective.

Link Stuart thought he was robbing an army payroll train with his shifty partner Gauche, but the former Frenchie gambler from New Orleans intends to keep the loot all for himself. Unwisely, he does not verify Stuart is completely 100% dead. On the other hand, he totally kills one of the samurai escorting the new Japanese ambassador to Washington on the train and steals the ceremonial sword meant as a gift for the president.

Honor demands his fellow samurai, Kuroda must recover the sword and return it to the ambassador in seven days. Kuroda also wants Gauche to taste his steel, for the sake of his late friend. Inconveniently, he will need the help of the uncooperative Stuart to track Gauche’s gang, but the samurai is persuasive.

Frankly, there is way too much bickering between Kuroda and Stuart during the first two acts. Just team up together already and get on with it. Nevertheless, Mifune and Charles Bronson (who co-starred in The Magnificent Seven, adapted from The Seven Samurai, starring Mifune) are perfect as the two East-West vengeance seekers. Bronson is an anti-hero with the emphasis on anti. In contrast, Kuroda is a model of rectitude, but Mifune molds him into a figure of tragic nobility. He really is the only one we root for.

Alain Delon is smooth and slimy as the villainous Gauche, while Ursula Andress actually brings a bit of fieriness to Cristina, the femme fatale prostitute. However, Capucine might even be more seductive as her madam Pepita, who is also Stuart’s sometime squeeze. Plus, Tetsu Nakamura brings dignity as well as his super-employable English fluency to the film as the ambassador. So yes, that is a heck of a cast.

The Last Son

Isaac Lemay has been cursed by a tribal elder, who has apparently read his Sophocles. The old man actually called it a prophecy, but the way Lemay lets it consume him definitely makes it a curse. Told he will one day be killed by one of his offspring, Lemay sets out to systematically kill his kin in Tim Sutton’s The Last Son, which releases today in theaters and on-demand.

Killing is what Lemay does best. It is what earned him the “curse.” However, he still found time to visit many prostitutes. Anna is one of the last, whose sons are not yet accounted for. Lemay makes quick work of the one she acknowledged, but Cal, the one she gave up for adoption for his own protection, is a slippery outlaw. In fact, he is a lot like his old man.

Cal’s feelings towards his mother are a little confused (again, see the literary allusion above), but the man who makes her swoon is Solomon, a hardboiled cavalry officer. Having been raised by the Cheyenne as a foundling, Solomon always remains a bit of an outsider in white society. Nevertheless, he is determined to bring to justice the outlaws who stole a gatling gun and murdered a detachment of troops. Yes, that would be Cal and his associates.

This is a dramatic change of pace for Sutton, who was previously known for moody art-house fare like Memphis. There is still a whole lot of brooding in Last Son, but everyone also takes care of Western genre business. As Westerns go, it is super-revisionist, but there is also a pinch of Weird West too, which makes things interesting.

Gunfight at Dry River : Co-Starring Michael Moriarty

You might be surprised how many westerns were filmed in Spain, particular a number of classics generally described as being of the “Spaghetti” variety rather than “Serrano.” In this case, the action ostensibly takes place south of the border, but it was indeed filmed in the old Spanish country. In its decrepit village, water is more precious than gold, but the villainous Ryles family is still looking for the latter anyway throughout Daniel Simpson’s Gunfight at Dry River, which is now available in theaters and on VOD.

Technically, it is more of a dry well than a dry river, but that wouldn’t sound as good in the title. Regardless, the Ryles family, gunslinging Verne, Cooper, and Reid, along with their Bible-thumping mama Etta, have taken over this nameless town and strictly limit the locals access to the well. That would be the well Alonzo Murrieta’s grandfather dug, so the Ryleses can immediately tell it will be bad for business when he rolls into town to reclaim his abandoned ancestral home.

Murrieta and the Ryles Brothers warily eye each other for what feels like forever, while he patches up his grandfather’s old roof and they continue to dig up the town in search of lost gold supposedly buried by a Spanish priest. However, conflict is sure to heat up when Murrieta starts flirting with Clarissa Hawkins, whom the crude Cooper also lusts after. At least her gringo father, John Boone Hawkins, is played by the great Michael Moriarty, giving us someone to watch, but this film is not the best vehicle for his talents.

The crumbling mission-style buildings and the parched landscape make for an effective western setting, but Etta Ryles’ hypocritically moralizing quickly becomes abrasively annoying. Even weirder, Fe Valen’s screenplay suggests the Ryleses are Northern Unionist sympathizers, who are concerned by threats of a Confederate patrol. Hey guys, you remember the Union Army were the ones against slavery, right?

Admittedly, that is a minor, but awkward issue. More fundamentally, Gunfight is just too slow in its slow-burning for its own good. Without question, this is a more stylish and ambitious film than Simpson’s prior horror movies, Hangar 10 and Spiderhole, but its didactic point-scoring against old-time religion and its molasses-pacing undermine the viewing experience.

Savage State: A French Western

Technically, England stayed neutral during the American Civil War, but they were super interested, as we know from The Education of Henry Adams. France also remained on the sidelines, but the government was even more divided over it. Nevertheless, French subjects living in the U.S. were instructed to stay scrupulously neutral as well. Right, good luck with that. Not surprisingly, an expatriate French family decides to return their homeland after getting a taste of reconstruction in David Perrault’s Savage State, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

Hired gun Victor Ludd was supposed to protect de Lisle, but rather awkwardly, his client died due to his trickery. Yet, de Lisle’s business partner still hires him to escort his family from Missouri to the east coast, where they can book passage back to France. They claimed to be neutral and even paid wages to their housemaid Layla. However, their first experience with General Order 28 convinces the parents to make the arduous journey back to France.

It will be a rough journey, especially because of the three sisters thinly disguised sexual attraction to Ludd. Their shrewish mother’s long simmering resentment of their father distinctly Antebellum closeness with Layla also threatens to boil over. However, the biggest threat they face comes from the gang of outlaws stalking them. It is personal for Bettie, their sociopathic leader, who also happens to be a former lover spurned by Ludd. It is safe to say she has yet to move on emotionally.

Kate Moran’s delirious scenery-chewing “fatal attraction” is far and away the best thing about Savage State, by a wide country mile.  She makes Bettie one of the best western movie heavies in years. Frankly, her gang is also pretty creepy, thanks to their authentic-style burlap bag masks, which make them look a lot like the slashers from The Town that Dreaded Sundown. The problem is the French family and their psycho-sexual tensions are drearily tiresome.

Thousand Pieces of Gold, Restored in 4K

She is one of the best-known figures of the Idaho Gold Rush era, but even her name is a matter of contention. She started life as Lalu Nathoy—maybe—but the rustic miners called her “Polly”—and it stuck. There might be debate over biographical details, but she is widely recognized as strong frontier women. History and legend mix within reason throughout Nancy Kelly’s freshly 4K-restored 1990 film, Thousand Pieces of Gold, based on Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s biographical novel, which opens virtually today.

Technically, Nathoy’s father sold her into debt-slavery, but we probably shouldn’t judge him to harshly, given her nomadic family’s dire poverty. Nevertheless, the Chinese who trafficked her into San Francisco looked down on her, because of her Northern Chinese heritage. Jim, a Chinese pack-mule trader, purchases for resale to Hong King, who is supposedly her new husband, but he is really just a brothel owner, operating in a hardscrabble gold rush town.

Nathoy manages to avoid a life of sexual servitude through sheer force of will and the support of a few townsfolk who still take the abolition of slavery seriously. Most notably, this includes Charlie Bemis, a former Union prisoner-of-war, who also happens to be Hong King’s landlord. He is clearly attracted to “Polly,” but he is a gentleman, at least by the rough standards of the frontier.

Anne Makepeace’s adapted screenplay prints a lot of the legends surrounding Lalu/Polly, but that makes obvious sense from a narrative standpoint. It can even be defended from a historical perspective, because all the legends and lies surrounding figures of the Old West have become just as important as the verifiable facts.

The Coen Brothers’ Ballad of Buster Scruggs

No period of American history is as vilified in popular culture as the days of the Western Frontier, but not for reasons usually stated. The mythology of the Old West established the Frontier as a safety valve and a guarantee of personal liberty. If the local authorities and society ever became too stifling, a man had the option of moving further off into that great open expanse of possibilities. Of course, that is a dangerous notion for those who take it upon themselves to tell others what to do. That is why nearly every contemporary Western produced by studios or major minis is a revisionist Western (an usually quite lectury about it). The Coen Brothers got away with a traditional Western when they remade (quite rousingly) True Grit, but they play it safer this time around. Still, there are a few traditional elements in their mostly cynical The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (trailer here), which launches today on Netflix.

Scruggs, a.k.a. “The San Saba Songbird,” is not our narrator. He is our title story, sort of like “The Outcasts of Poker Flats.” He also sets the tone. He croons and dresses all in white, but he is a decidedly black-hearted villain, the irony of which he delights in pointing out. Scruggs has been a hit with the sort of critics who hate Westerns, but real viewers will probably find his shtick grows tiresome. The same is even truer of the second story, featuring James Franco as a bank robber plagued by luck so bad, it is sort of like Final Destination as written by O. Henry. It is easily the weakest installment of the anthology film, as you probably already guessed, because of Franco.

Death is a constant the Coens’ stories, but so is exploitation, which is particularly pronounced in the third tale. Liam Neeson appears as a Mephistophelean Impresario who cold-bloodedly tours backwater towns with circus geek-like orator of 19^th Century literary favorites. The grotesque elements are distinctive, but the real point of the story is to rub our noses in how nasty and brutish the Old West was.

That is a rough start, but the film then turns a corner offering up three ripping good yarns. We next meet Tom Waites playing an old prospector who might be getting a little dotty, but he is persistent. He will also be forced to confront issues of mortality and exploitation before the tale is done.

By far, the best constituent narrative is “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” which really could pass for a lost Bret Harte story. Alice Longabaugh is a young woman of nervous disposition, due to the unhealthy influence of her jerkweed brother Gilbert. When he dies not long after setting off on a wagon train to Oregon, she is left at the mercy of their hired wagon driver. However, the caravan’s guides take a liking to her, especially smitten Billy Knapp.

Frankly, we’re impressed the Brothers Coen had the guts to tell this tale, because it incorporates some decidedly old school traditional elements. It is also the most emotionally engaging and honestly tragic. Zoe Kazan is absolutely terrific, in a heartbreaking way, as mousy but resolute Alice Longabaugh. As Knapp, Bill Heck hits the perfect “aw shucks” note, while developing some winningly earnest chemistry with her. Yet, as Knapp’s crusty partner Mr. Arthur, Grainger Hines really makes the story work, with the sort of performance that sneaks up on you and then lowers the boom.

The concluding segment is also a bit jokey, but the macabrely gothic riff on John Ford’s Stagecoach works so much better than the first three tall tales, precisely because of its weird ambiguity. Plus, Brendan Gleeson plays a crooning Irish bounty-hunter, so what’s not to like.

Fortunately, the best ballad in Buster Scruggs is also the longest. As a bonus, the wrap-around segments are really cool, featuring a hand turning the pages of an early 20^th Century book with color plates rendered in the style of N.C. Wyeth. That probably means more than 50% of the film is solidly entertaining, which is not a bad ratio for anthology films. Recommended for fans of the Coen Brothers and [mostly] revisionist Westerns, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs starts streaming today (11/16), on Netflix.

Five Fingers for Marseilles: A Bobotie Western

If the Goonies grew up to splinter into two mortal enemy factions, it would be a lot like what happens to the Five Fingers. They were inseparable during their Apartheid-era childhood, but as adults, their interests and values diverged drastically. It is all Tau’s fault, but he has finally come home to find some redemption in Michael Matthews’ Five Fingers for Marseilles (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The five lads used to have fun playing cowboys, but their innocence ended when two crooked tax-collecting cops abducted their friend Lerato. The hot-headed Tau saved her, but in the process, he killed two officers. For years, he lived on the run as a modern-day highwayman, praying on desperately poor travelers who can least afford it. After a prison stint, Tau resolves to live a quiet life, if not necessarily a straight one. He returns to Marseilles (the other one), finding it changed, yet still the same.

Pockets, the well-heeled former Finger is now the Mayor and Cockroach is his brazenly corrupt chief of police. Although Pockets talks a progressive game, it is clear he and Cockroach have just picked up where the former government left off. Unathi, the storyteller of the Fingers is now a priest, but watching his former friends abuse their power has precipitated more crises of faith for him than what Ethan Hawke experiences in First Reformed. Maybe “Zulu” is the lucky one. He is not alive to witness the Fingers’ fall from grace, but his dead-ringer son sees it all. Yet, as bad as Pockets and Cockroach might be, there is a new gangster in town who is even worse. His archetypal name is “Ghost” and he can immediately tell Tau will be bad for business.

At just a whisker under two hours, Marseilles runs long by any western/revisionist western/eastern western standard, but it still provides several major characters only the scantest personality development. However, it certainly gives western conventions a few clever twists, including Tau’s ad-hoc reformation of the Five Fingers.

In fact, some of the most interesting characters are those unlikely allies, particularly “Honest John,” the drunken traveling salesman and Wei, the Chinese immigrant shopkeeper Cockroach mercilessly extorts. Dean Fourie is so fabulously flamboyant and debauched as Honest John, we’d humbly suggest his own spin-off vehicle. Kenneth Fok is much more tightly restrained as Wei, but he really gives the film some heart and soul.

Vuyo Dabula has the right kind of imposing physical presence for Tau, but he only has one performance setting: remorseful brooding. As Pockets, Kenneth Nkosi seems to ooze greed and hypocrisy from every sweaty pore. Unfortunately, Hamilton Dhlamini does not make much impact as Ghost, despite his considerable physical size.

Cinematographer Shaun Lee is definitely on-board giving the Eastern Cape landscape the Monument Valley treatment. Granted, a tighter editorial hand would not have hurt the film, especially during their early slingshot-wielding years, but isn’t that always the case? However, you have to give Matthews and screenwriter Sean Drummond credit for their meet-the-new-boss-not-nearly-different-enough-from-the-old-boss honesty. Recommended as a sweepingly tragic South African take on the Western genre, a “Bobotie Western,” Five Fingers for Marseilles opens this Friday (9/7) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

The Jade Pendant: Los Angeles at its Most Infamous

Los Angeles has a long history of riots, going back to at least the Nineteenth Century. Who better to helm this pre-Exclusionary Act melodrama, culminating in the 1871 mass Chinese lynchings than British-HK director Po-Chih Leong. Arguably, his knack for straddling cultures makes him a logical choice, but casting South Korean Clara Lee in the lead is bound to rile the authenticity police. Given the subject matter, the cosmetics of it are admittedly a little awkward, but there is no getting around the fact she is the best thing going for Leong’s The Jade Pendant (trailer here), which releases today on DVD.

Fleeing an abusive arranged marriage, Ying Ying Leung and her best friend Lily agree to a five-year term of indentured service, in return to passage to San Francisco. They believe they will be working in a flower shop, but of course it is a brothel. Leung is renamed Peony, but Lily conveniently stays Lily. However, unlike the other girls there, Leung can read and write both English and apparently Mandarin. She can understand her contract and assert her rights. She never agreed to be a prostitute, but she still owes fives years of service, so Madame Pong, much to her own surprise, assigns her housekeeping duties. Needless to say, this does not sit well with Yu Hing, the big Tong boss, who wants Peony for himself.

Eventually, Peony will start romancing Tom Wong, a prodigal prospector, who has had better luck slinging chop suey. They even start building a life together in Los Angeles after Madame Pong grants Peony her independence, as a means of asserting her own. Yet, they cannot abandon Lily, who bears the brunt of Yu Hing’s abuse. Nor is he willing to let Peony go, especially since she reminds him of his late wife, who committed suicide to escape him.

As the titular accessory-wearing Peony, Clara Lee is mostly a satisfyingly dynamic and charismatic Western heroine. Still, it is frustrating to see her suffering from Alex Rodriguez Syndrome, in which her martial arts are at their highest when the stakes are negligible, but during times of crisis, she can hardly punch straight. She has okay chemistry with Taiwanese Godfrey Gao’s Wong, but her best scenes are played with Madame Pong, played with tart dignity by Tsai Chin. They have an intriguing relationship that wears well over the course of the film. As Yu, Tzi Ma chews the scenery with fair degree of relish, but it is difficult to buy his ultra-bad martial arts sequences.

As you might have deduced, Jade Pendant has serious consistency issues, careening from a scruffy Kung Fu throw-down to an awkward issue-driven film at the drop of a ten-gallon hat. Arguably, co-screenwriters David Assael and Scott Rosenfelt simplify the racial politics of the riots, painting them as white versus Asian, overlooking Hispanic participation in the killings. Frankly, the whole ugly incident vindicates San Francisco’s Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, because the eight men convicted for manslaughter had their sentences over-turned on technicalities.

Leong has produced a disparate body of work, including a fair amount of TV work in Hollywood, his noir calling card Ping Pong, and most recently the tonally confused HK horror movie, Baby Blues. Jade Pendant makes it even more erratic. Yet, even when it is problematically exploitive, it is weirdly watchable. Not a priority, unless you are a die-hard Clara Lee or Godfrey Gao fan, The Jade Pendant releases today on DVD.

Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country

He is an outlaw named Kelly from Australia, but his circumstances are entirely different from those of old Ned. Based on the historical figure of Wilaberta Jack, Sam Kelly will kill a white man in self-defense. It is entirely justifiable, but this is Central Australia in 1920, so Kelly immediately takes flight. His fictionalized treatment becomes the stuff of a revisionist Australian Western in Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When Fred Smith talks about God and his Christian faith, he really means it. That is why Sam and Lizzie Kelly really are fortunate to work for him. Regrettably, Smith’s new neighbor, Harry March, a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD, is not so enlightened. He cynically exploits Smith’s Christian charity, guilting him into loaning Sam and Lizzie to help whip his station into working order. Unbeknownst to Sam, March will act in a predatory manner towards Lizzie and then dismiss them from his property. The next time they encounter each other, March is shooting up the absent Smith’s farmhouse, accusing the Kellys of harboring a young runaway aboriginal station hand, loaned to him by the exploitative Mick Kennedy.

Old Sam has little choice but to blast a load of buckshot into March. Having no faith in the white Crown’s justice, Sam and Lizzie head out into the wild country. Inevitably, the hard-charging Sergeant Fletcher forms a posse with Kennedy and the reluctant Smith to give chase. However, many of the town’s poor white rabble will be surprised by the professionalism of circuit court Judge Taylor.

Sweet Country would be something like an Australian fusion of Chato’s Land and To Kill a Mockingbird, if it were not so conscious of its own social significance. Thornton lays it on heavy and never passes up an opportunity for a teaching moment. Yet, response to the film will likely be particularly divisive because of his idiosyncratic practice of flashing forward to briefly depict a character’s most significant moment, either when they are first introduced or at times of extreme stress. Although it is initially disorienting, it gives the film a really distinctive vibe over the long run.

It is also intriguing to watch how Thornton observes and subverts Western cinema conventions. He certainly addresses the film’s moral issues in stark black-and-white terms, but it should be noted Smith is an entirely sympathetic and empathetic character and the grizzled Sgt. Fletcher evolves in intriguingly ambiguous ways.

The fact that Smith and Fletcher are played by two of Oceania’s most recognizable thesps, Sam Neil and Bryan Brown, certainly will not hurt the film’s prospects. Neil is particularly engaging and ultimately quite poignant as the decent Smith. Indeed, it is quite refreshing to see a devout Christian treated with such respect in a film. Likewise, Matt Day’s portrayal of the judge is intriguingly messy. He has his moments, both good and bad. Yet, it is the nonprofessional Aboriginal actors Hamilton Morris and Gibson John, who really power the film, as the taciturn Kelly and the more ingratiating Archie (just Archie, he says), Kennedy’s foreman, who serves as the posse’s tracker.

Both Thornton’s style and his conspicuous manipulations can be distracting, but his boldness earns the viewer’s respect. It is uneven, but it successfully differentiates itself from the scores of international Western riffs. Recommended on balance for fans of socially conscious revisionist Westerns, Sweet Country opens this Friday (4/6) in New York, at the IFC Center.