1821 Pictures, Boies / Schiller Film Group, Handsomecharlie Films,
Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Noah Emmerich, Ewan McGregor, Rodrigo Santoro, Boyd Holbrook
Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) is a frontier woman trying her best to make a home for her husband, Billy (Noah Emmerich) and child. But Jane has a past. A gang of outlaws is chasing after them, and when her husband returns home badly injured by being shot, he tells her the gang is on the way to get them and to get away. But Jane does not back down, so she heads into town to find a former lover Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton) who is not very happy to see her, and she asks him for help to stand up to the gang.
Westerns are rare these days, and there’s nothing better than a good western. I was delighted to see this one come out. There have been a few lately (I’m thinking of The Hateful 8, for example) and I anxiously dug into this one. It is quite raw. The violence is real, and the story is the king in this film, as Natalie Portman pulls out an awesome performance. I was not expecting her to pull off a role like this that would appear out of her wheelhouse, but she played the wild west housewife who ain’t going to take crap from anybody very, very well. Joel Edgerton as Dan Frost is also a very good performance and brings all the different emotions and feelings out very well to. But this is also a very nice script. Just a simple story of danger and revenge and self defense, but it all comes together very chillingly. The violence is harsh, and we witness the cruelty of this battle, and like the great westerns of old, the suspense and the waiting keeps us on the edge of our seats. An excellent performance by all, and kudos for a tremendous screenplay that the director and the actors pulled off in a good show. If you love Westerns and don’t mind the R rating, this is a shocking thriller of a western that ought to be well worth seeing.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
