THE SISTERS BROTHERS

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

How many American Westerns have been made? Hundreds, surely — probably thousands. It’s a genre that became the first example of American mythology in motion pictures, pre-dating the likes of Star Wars, which dominated the culture in the late 20th century, and superhero movies, which dominate the culture in the early 21st. The Western, which used to be churned out at breakneck speed, waned in cultural significance decades ago. If you want to make one now, and have people pay attention, it really has to stand apart, particularly from the countless Westerns that preceded it.

And so we get to The Sisters Brothers, which is a Western merely as a backdrop. You could more accurately call it a period piece, a costume drama set in Oregon and Northern California in the 1850s. The costumes happen to be those of the American Old West, not exactly cowboy, although they certainly get around on horses. There are no Native American characters in this story. This is about early gold rush prospectors, paid killers, and paid-killers-turned-prospectors. Even those are backdrop details, as this is most specifically about the relationship between two brothers, Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix), who share the last name of “Sisters.”

They’re excellent at what they do. The Sisters Brothers opens with a wide shot, kept static and wide as the viewer witnesses an ambush on a house in a wide field at night, bright flashes of gunfire seen at random spots on the screen, barely illuminating their immediate area for split seconds. The Sisters Brothers are two against many, contracted to kill only one of the men in this house, and they win.

They also don’t exactly have other careers to fall back on. They have only each other. They are incredibly close, they get under each other’s skin — but in subtle, believable ways that make it easy to believe these two are brothers. They share a tragic past within their family that set them on this path.

Here is another film with frustratingly misleading marketing. The trailers make The Sisters Brothers look way more “fun” than it actually is, featuring self-conciously cool, snappy editing that does nothing to represent the film itself, which is something far deeper, far more contemplative. Particularly for a Western, this is much more a work of art than of action. Gun fights are messy. Horrible accidents happen.

If nothing else, The Sisters Brothers ultimately demonstrates how truly random one’s life trajectory can be. Where these characters wind up in the end is nowhere near any typical Western of yesteryear would take them. There is neither catharsis nor blowout, no particular epiphanies or breakthroughs.

There are certainly fascinating detours. Eli and Charlie have set out to meet up with a tracker named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has in turn captured a prospector, Hermann (Riz Ahmed) who has come up with a chemical formula that can be used to illuminate gold in a stream at night. Director and co-writer Jacques Audiard, here making his first English language feature film, has a knack for sprinkling details indicative of larger themes rarely made explicit in his storytelling. After Hermann demonstrates how he prospects with these chemicals, we briefly see the stream the following morning, littered with dead fish. Where might this stream be carrying that crap?

There are several unforgettable images from this film. A horse escaped from a burning barn, itself set aflame. In one truly horrifying scene, we see a spider crawl right into the mouth of a man sleeping by a fire. At first this seems like it’s just a random detail, but like the butterfly that changes the weather around the world, these are details that matter, setting off subtle differences in each event that follows. And really, it is a random detail. It is also important to the story.

As well constructed as this film undeniably is, I struggle to think who it’s for, exactly. It has moments of dark beauty, one or two moments of subtly dark humor, a few chaotic gun fights. There’s a pretty high body count, many of the deaths senseless, or at best the result of people knowingly yet foolishly trying to get in the Sisters Brothers’ way.

And then, in the end, after being robbed of a climax they only thought they were headed for, The Sisters Brothers ends on a surprising note of sweetness, featuring a brief appearance by Carol Kane. Rutger Hauer appears as the Commodore, the brothers’ employer, and even more briefly: only twice, at different points in the movie, from a distance. He doesn’t even having any lines. The focus is always squarely on the brothers, even during the first half when Hermann and John are intercut as a sort of “B story.”

There’s a lot to consider in The Sisters Brothers, although considering it all is not necessary to appreciate the film. Suffice it to say that the four leads all give solid performances, each of them uniquely nuanced. Any movie set in the American West made in the 21st century must indeed have something unique to offer, and this one is certainly a far cry from brainless entertainment. Honestly if that’s what you’re looking for, this will bore you. I found myself appreciating how it meanders with a purpose, and found its conclusion oddly satisfying considering how surprisingly subdued it is in the end.

There’s a lot more going on here than you might think.

Overall: B+

HOSTILES

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

I see a movie like Hostiles and I immediately want to know what Native Americans think of it. Westerns, as arguably the biggest contributor to American mythology in the twentieth century, have evolved a great deal over the decades. It's not so easy now just to make a movie about cowboy heroes who defeat Indian villains. Neither fit into such neat categories, and Hostiles is clearly being very deliberate about that.

Unlike, say, Wind River, though, the iMDB.com page for Hostiles has no discussion about Native American community involvement or response to the project. On the other hand, here's a take from Indian Country Today: "A Profound Respect for Native Culture, A Gut Punch of Reality." Having woefully little working knowledge of said culture beyond what I've seen in movies that historically treated Native Americans with little to no respect, I guess there's some comfort in at least one voice with far more authority than mine on the subject being pleased with the film, or at least its portrayals. And it's always good to know the Native American characters -- of which there are several here -- are played by actual Native American actors.

And, indeed, rare has a Western been this complexly layered since Unforgiven, although, truth be told, this film is nowhere near as solid as that, at least in terms of story arc. Much has been made among critics of the brutality giving way to redemption in this film, but I'm not so convinced Hostiles truly earns the redemption it gives its Native-hating lead character (played flawlessly by Christian Bale).

In terms of the brutality, the story is pretty horrifying from the start: we see a group of horse-stealing Native Americans massacre an entire family, failing to catch only the mother, Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), leaving her widowed and childless, all three of her children -- one of them a baby -- shot and killed. Next we move to a fort in New Mexico where we meet a soldier named Captain Joseph J. Blocker (Bale), and we learn right quick that he has a long history of slaughtering Native Americans -- men, women, children, you name it. He has as much contempt for Native Americans as any man has had in American cinema, or so it would seem at first.

And here is where things get complicated, not just in terms of plot, but in terms of how well Hostiles works as a story. The script was based on a manuscript found by the widow of Donald E. Stewart, who wrote Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October -- and who died in 1999. Perhaps some more polishing of the script, which is decent but not great, could have been in order. As it exists onscreen, it has Joseph tasked with escorting an elderly Native American prisoner (Wes Studi) who has been held for seven years, back to his home in Montana to die of the cancer he is afflicted with. And over time they bond, as they face an array of common enemies along the way. For a man who is supposed to have such a deep and abiding, lethal contempt for his kind, it could easily be argued that the quickness of this bond is a bit beyond belief.

In a way, Hostiles is a road movie, just with people on horses -- and with people left alive steadily dwindling over the course of the story. Supporting cast here includes Ben Foster as another criminal pawned off on Blocker to be escorted to another town; and assisting officers played by Jesse Plemons and Timothée Chalomet. I was rather surprised to see Chalomet in his small role -- that guy is everywhere this year, this making three movies he's in playing in theatres concurrently (the others being Lady Bird and his multiple-award-nominated starring turn in Call Me By Your Name).

Ultimately, the plot pieces in Hostiles fit together a bit too neatly, making it slightly too Hollywood-convenient for its own good. That said, the characters themselves, and how their relationships with each other are portrayed, are uniformly compelling, the actors each elevating the otherwise contrived material with their superior skill and talent. Hostiles is no masterpiece, but it's certainly worth experiencing, both for its interpersonal tensions as well as its sociopolitical underpinnings.

Speaking of which -- a quick note on its language. It's relatively well known that plenty of Native Americans are fine with, and even prefer, "Indian." I don't recall the word "Indian" once being used in this script, which is a bit of odd revisionist history. Certainly people in the 1892 American West would have used that word rather than "Natives," which is what the characters here use. It feels a little like deliberate and perhaps misguided political correctness. Also: there is one black character (played by a capable Jonathan Majors), as one of the soldiers assisting Blocker, and in this movie, not only is his race never an issue with anyone, it's never even directly addressed. For 1892 America, that seems odd at best, and makes the character feel slightly like tokenism. In this world, apparently, racial tensions only exist between "The Natives," and everyone else. We all know that was not the case.

So: Hostile is in many ways, maybe most of them relatively subtle, problematic. It still works as a film, and particularly as a Western. It's compelling from beginning to end and is ripe for discussion.

Rosamund Pike and Christian Bale begin the dance of the aggrieved.

Overall: B+