Movie Review: Dead Man's Burden (2012)

Release Year: 2012
Director: Jared Moshe
Writer: Jared Moshe
Studio: Illuminaria Productions
Rating: NR
Runtime: 93 minutes
Setting: New Mexico




What It's About

While patrolling the post-Civil War wilds of Wyoming, lawman Wade McCurry (Barlow Jacobs) receives a letter from his estranged father imploring him to hasten back to the family's homestead in New Mexico. It seems that trouble has beset the McCurry clan, threatening the family holdings and forcing a legendarily stubborn father to extend his hand to a son he'd once threatened to kill should he ever return home. Somewhat reluctantly, Wade resigns his post and treks to New Mexico to find his father dead, his sister Martha (Clare Bowen) grown and married to Heck Kirkland (David Call) - a fugitive member of Quantrill's Raiders - and a Northern land agent (Joseph Lyle Taylor) sniffing around the property in an attempt to secure priceless water rights for a copper mining operation. It's not long before Wade suspects foul play, and tensions rise as the former lawman sets out to protect the homestead and seek justice. The discovery of the truth surrounding the circumstances of his father's death, combined with the revelation of his own past to Martha and Heck, forces Wade to confront the corrupting power that money holds - even over family ties.

Clare Bowen as Martha McCurry in Dead Man's Burden

Written and directed by Civil War buff Jared Moshe, whose credits thus far have been limited to the production of a handful of shorts and documentaries, Dead Man's Burden is very much a character-driven piece. Filmed on a micro-budget and in a limited number of locations, the movie's fate instead rests upon a strong story, believable characters, and a cast with the talent to breathe life into both.

Despite the limited resources that first-time writer/director Moshe had to work with, Dead Man's Burden gives the presence of a big production wrapped up in indie packaging. Shot on film, the cinematography pleasingly captures the rugged beauty of the stark landscape in which the story is set. The dreaded lens flare phenomenon creeps in to a scene or two, but by and large Moshe's framing was enjoyable.

The story, which Moshe seems to have written with his limited budget in mind, is plausible and well-researched. The Civil War nerd in me was pleased when a key reveal in protagonist Wade's wartime service involved the name of General George Thomas, a key figure in the Battle of Chickamauga who is probably unknown to most viewers - but was certainly well known to the characters in in the film.

Barlow Jacobs as Wade McCurry in Dead Man's Burden

Portraying the three main characters, Barlow Jacobs, David Call and Clare Bowen all deliver convincing performances. None have prior Western film experience, but all adequately adopt the mannerisms and dialect that enable them to accurately portray displaced Southerners scratching out an existence in the harsh frontier. For Jacobs, a native of the Southern United States, I imagine getting into character was not nearly as difficult as it was for Bowen - an Australian. Other than a few slips, she masterfully masked her nationality with an authentically Southern accent.

I found little fault with Dead Man's Burden, though some may bemoan the lack of train robberies and saloons or the sparing use of shootouts. The biggest complaint that I have centers on the sometimes too authentic dialect, which occasionally descended into indecipherable territory. I've lived in the South for several years now, yet still some phrases issued by our three main characters escaped my understanding.

Less conspicuous is what I feel to be a weakness in Bowen's acting arsenal. While she was spot on with most of her emotions - anger, joy, iciness - her display of fear was jarringly unconvincing. It was almost comical, in fact, but overall just a minor gripe.

As you could probably guess by now, the action in Dead Man's Burden is somewhat limited and therefore bloodshed occurs rarely and only when necessary to propel the story forward. By and large the effects are tasteful and avoid over-amplifying the gore factor.

For the most part, the low-budget Westerns that have been cranked out this decade have tended to be on the south side of lousy. Dead Man's Burden does much to reverse this trend, offering up instead a well-filmed, well-written, and well-acted story that extends beyond the genre stereotypes.

Movie Review: Django Unchained (2012)

Release Year: 2012
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes
Setting: Texas, Georgia





What It's About

For his foray into the Western film genre, the director-who-needs-no-introduction Quentin Tarantino chose to resurrect the spaghetti Western character of Django. Made famous by Franco Nero in the 1966 eponymous film, the character of Django would go on to appear in more than 30 other features - though none were "officially" linked to the Sergio Corbucci original. Thus it comes as no surprise, then, that the Django of Tarantino's creation bears practically no resemblance to any previous incarnation.

In Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx plays the titular character who - with the aid of German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) - escapes slavery in Texas and embarks on a quest to find and free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Along the way, Django learns to shed the mental bonds of his life as a slave and refine the gunslinging and  subterfuge skills he'll need to survive in the antebellum South. Django's former overseers and a white supremacist vigilante group led by Big Daddy (Don Johnson) are just two obstacles that the duo must overcome to reach Calvin Candie's (Leonardo DiCaprio) Georgia plantation and Broomhilda.

Knowing Tarantino's predilection for over-the-top violence, I expected Django Unchained to not be able to hold my full attention for its nearly two-and-a-half hour runtime. Instead, although the violence is at a level on par with his previous films, Tarantino managed to pen a film that is not only honest to the origins of the title character but also sheds an unflinching light on that "peculiar institution" from which Django emerges.

Tarantino's - dare I say it - genius is on full display throughout Django Unchained. The encounter with Big Daddy and his band of vigilantes, which includes Jonah Hill, is absolutely hilarious. The comedy continues as Samuel L. Jackson makes his sixth appearance in a Tarantino film as Steven, Calvin Candie's head house slave. In fact, it's quite a spectacular juxtaposition that Tarantino creates as he handles the horrors of slavery with brutal honesty and still manages to inject enough laugh-out-loud comedy to keep the film from becoming oppressively bleak.

All of the lead actors deliver brilliant performances, which is remarkable given that the characters portrayed by Johnson and DiCaprio are so morally repugnant. The two should definitely be commended. Jamie Foxx, not one of my favorite actors, nevertheless impressed me with his command of the Django character. While he didn't have a ton of emotional range, his very Eastwood-esque demeanor fit well within the atmosphere of the film.

An added bonus is the brief cameo by Franco Nero in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek exchange with Foxx. Tarantino has made it no secret that he's a fan of classic and spaghetti Westerns, and his homage to the originator of the mystique surrounding the Django character was a classy move.

There really wasn't much about Django Unchained that I could - or want to - find fault with. Some of the CGI effects were a touch on the amateurish side and a few of the foul utterances from Samuel L. Jackson's character may be a bit of an anachronism, but by and large Tarantino has delivered a faultless film.

Tarantino's head-on tackling of the ugliness of slavery, while a necessary and an important aspect of Django Unchained, will nevertheless shock those viewers who have only a shallow understanding of human bondage. Slavery was an abomination, and Tarantino gives us just a glimpse as to why.

The violence and gore is, initially, held in check but as the film progresses Tarantino's flair for embellishment breaks free. Nothing is very graphic, per se, but to label the film as being bloody would be an understatement.

Just as the issue of slavery is dealt with in a blatant manner, so to is the language of the day. As you would with any Tarantino film, expect Django Unchained to be rife with foul language. In this case, however, the proliferative use of the "n" word by all members of the cast may be unsettling. Understand, though, that this part of the script is just another way that Tarantino exposes the cruelty and crudity of the time period that the film is set in.

There is only one scene of nudity in Django Unchained. Involving Kerry Washington's character Broomhilda, the glimpses of nakedness are extremely brief but the context in which she's shown is a rather cruel and dehumanizing on. There's no titillation here.

Although the majority of Django Unchained is set in the southern United States and not in the West - Tarantino himself considers this a "southern" film and not a Western - all of the elements of a traditional Western are present and accounted for. Like most of Tarantino's films, brutality isn't sacrificed for accessibility, but there is a significant amount of humor present to ease the impact of some of the more graphic scenes. Django Unchained won't be considered a classic, but it is one of the top Westerns released this decade.

Movie Review: Meek's Cutoff (2010)

Release Date:  2010
Director:  Kelly Reichardt
Writer:  Jonathan Raymond
Studio:  Evenstar Films
Rating:  PG
Run Time:  104 minutes
Setting: Oregon

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Plot Summary
A small group of pioneers, making their way across Oregon's High Desert in 1845, become increasingly despondent as confidence in their hired guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) erodes. Meek promised the passage would only take a few days, but more than two weeks into the journey the three-wagon caravan is running low on water and hope of reaching the Willamette Valley fades with each creaking turn of the wagon wheels. The monotony of the trek is broken by the appearance of a lone Indian (Rod Rondeaux). The group must decide whether to place their collective fate into the hands of the newcomer, whose origins and intentions are a mystery, or to continue on their current, aimless course.

Review
Based upon a historical wagon train excursion that was led by the real Stephen Meek, Meek's Cutoff is a grandly filmed examination of the desperate circumstances that many naive pioneers found themselves in when placing their fate in the hands of sometimes dubious frontiersmen. Owing to the film's fact-based roots, and because cast member Zoe Kazan is one of my favorite actresses, I had high hopes for Meek's Cutoff. In the end, though, the movie disappointed me on a number of levels.

My greatest disappointment was not so much with the film itself, but of my expectations as to what the film was meant to be. I was expecting a gritty, perhaps even bleak, tale of the rigors faced by those early practitioners of Manifest Destiny. In that regard, the film does deliver. The overall mood is somber and the resigned hopelessness of the three families is adequately conveyed by the cast...though perhaps too adequately. Director Kelly Reichardt injects the audience into a world of hardscrabble, infinite horizons, and never ending weariness by skillfully leveraging the unforgiving location - which in this film is more of a character than a setting - and a script that is short on words but heavy with meaning. The result is a stark portrayal of life on the trail, complete with ceaseless monotony and the grim determination to make it over the next hill. As true to reality as this portrayal may be, the uncomfortably long periods without any dialog or plot development ultimately lose those who view this film expecting to be entertained - like me.

This was kinda how the movie was paced

Tedious as the film is to sit through, Meek's Cutoff does a number of things remarkably well. The authenticity of the costumes and pioneer accoutrements is, with only a handful of exceptions, pleasingly accurate. We even get to see lead actress Michelle Williams step through the loading and firing of a musket not once, but twice. Given the urgency of the situation that prompts her to discharge the firearm, Williams' adherence to the lengthy process definitely heightens the tension of the scene.

The introduction of Rondeaux's character is also handled quite skillfully as well. No subtitles are given when Rondeaux speaks his character's native tongue, leaving the audience just as baffled by his words as the settlers were. Hostile or friendly, his intentions remain a mystery to both the settlers and the viewers. Reichardt and writer Jonathan Raymond have collaborated in the past on films that harbor a socio-politcal message, and Meek's Cutoff is no exception. Although Rondeaux is treated with kindness by some of the settlers, their motivations are purely selfish as they hope to entice him to lead them to precious, life-sustaining water. Racism, and the manipulation of Native Americans by white settlers, are obvious undertones.

Uh oh....

Reichardt also touches on the role of women in frontier life, deliberately lingering on the subservient behavior exhibited by the three female settlers. The way that each of the women instinctively take the oxen reigns from their husbands whenever the caravan would stop and the men would confer with each other is one of the ways that this subtly feminist message is presented to viewers. Several scenes also show the women walking together at the rear of the wagon train, again indicating their subordinate status. In contrast to this routine behavior, Williams' character Emily Tetherow emerges as the de facto leader of the band in her husband's absence. It is she who reacts to the initial contact with the Indian, and her subsequent interactions with him are what prompts him to (possibly) lead the weakened settlers to the water that they desperately need. Another disappointment for me was Zoe Kazan's contribution to the film. She plays the easily spooked, quite possibly simple-minded Mille Gately. Her hysterics were often used in contrast to Williams' level-headedness, but I think Zoe overacted this one just a touch. Pity.

The iconic scene

While the social commentary was presented in a subtle, historically accurate way, the ending of the film was not. No spoilers here, ever, but I will say that the ending of the film left me entirely dissatisfied and with a feeling that I'd just been cheated. Although glacially paced and completely lacking any of the typical Western elements of conflict, Meek's Cutoff does manage to build a significant amount of tension over its runtime and to end the way it does is an insult to those who've invested their time in the film.

Do not view Meek's Cutoff expecting to see something within the normal confines of the Western genre. It certainly has the setting and history to be categorized as such, but Reichardt and Raymond's unorthodox style will leave many fans as distraught as the characters in the film.

For the Stathounds:
Body Count:	0
Explosions:	0
Full Moons:	1
Actors who've appeared on Dukes of Hazzard:	0
Actors who've appeared on Twilight Zone:	0