Reilly is excellent, and Phoenix is good, but the Ahmed/Gyllenhaal duo really makes me want to read the book, since I feel the film shortshrifts this sensitive and constantly surprising pairing in favor of the more conventional main one. And even if I didn't know beforehand, this clearly has a sense of being a book adaptation, which I mean as a mostly positive comment in this case. Although the film's overall big-picture plot is faintly a western staple, actual trajectory shapeshifts thrillingly, much of it from richly character-based twists and turns. But its unpredictable power resides in detours that illustrate the people and place of such western time, where story of cyclical violence and greed collide with newer invention and technology, so what's old is made new again. The film also ends on such an unexpected but fitting grace note, so that its gentle power reverberates backwards gorgeously. 7.5/10
Midnight Run (1988) - 9
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
Sisters (1973) - 6.5
Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5
This is the first Western where I heard another viewer talk about how they love watching westerns for the nature viewing and vistas.
Months later, I still remember him ooh-ing and ahh-ing as some of the scenic viewing took place.
I thought that was just something people did on twitter.
I thought this was an excellent western and I loved how Audiard was able to milk the genre for fresh and unexpected annotations on History, characters and dialogues. I don't think I've ever quite seen a gold prospector like Ahmed on screen, or a Pinkerton detective like Gyllenhaal. The tone of the movie is quite compelling and like Peng says, the ending is unexpected, graceful and heart warming.
According to Wikipedia's plot summary the novel is pretty fixated on Eli's point of view, so there would be even less of this than in the movie.Quoting Peng (view post)
Good western even if I felt that the last act loses way too much steam. Reilly is excellent, and so is Phoenix. I liked the Ahmed/Gyllenhaal duo as well, and they stood in great contrast to the brothers. The shots were pretty gorgeous and the humor works really well. I might watch this again at some point, and I viewed it thanks to Hulu.
Blog!
And it's happened once again
I'll turn to a friend
Someone that understands
And sees through the master plan
But everybody's gone
And I've been here for too long
To face this on my own
Well, I guess this is growing up
There's movies that exist.
And there's there are movies that you completely forgot existed. This was one of them.