Reviews by johanlefourbe

Since I kept hearing some really good things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, even though it was nothing really ground-breaking, it was still a really solid Western. Basically, it is a rather long movie and maybe 2/3 was about a posse looking for some kidnapped people, first on horse and then later on even on foot so, to be honest, nothing much else happened during this movie. Eventually, what made this movie really work was the nice mood created by first time director S. Craig Zahler and the 4 characters involved in this posse. Indeed, these 4 men were pretty neat thanks also to some really solid performances from the cast (Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins). In fact, even the character of O'Dwyer’s wife was fairly developed and went beyond the usual damsel in distress. Furthermore, towards the end, the whole thing became a rather gruesome horror freak show and it was rather surprising how well it worked mixed with the Western genre. It was also a nice touch that they didn’t explain much what was exactly the deal with this mysterious Indian/troglodyte tribe which made them even more ominous. Anyway, to conclude, it was a really decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

Since I have always been a fan of Paul Greengrass’s work, I was really eager to check this movie.  Well, the tricky thing is that it was released only a few months after the amazing ‘Utøya 22. Juli’ which was also dealing with the same tragedy in Utoya and there is a fair chance that I would have enjoyed more Greengrass’s version if I had not seen just before another stellar movie about the subject.  Another thing that bothered me was that even though they went for a Norwegian cast, they chose to make them speak English which was really disappointing. At least, it was pretty neat that they chose a really different approach and, as a result, it is actually worthwhile to watch both movies. In this case, the scope was much larger and covered much more ground, like the preparation of the attacks and also the aftermath, but, unfortunately, it also made the whole thing rather unfocused and sometimes slightly frustrating. For example, in contrary to ‘Utøya 22. Juli’, you do spend some time with Anders Behring Breivik but even though Anders Danielsen Lie did give a solid performance, I didn’t feel that I learned really anything new about Breivik after all. Also, with this movie, you would believe that the attack on the island was fairly short and that the police showed up within a few minutes when in fact, it took them more than 1 hour to get there. Eventually, I think the movie would have worked better if they had focused only on Viljar who was such a strong character thanks to a really good Jonas Strand Gravli. Another detail that slightly bothered me was the way the characters spoke which became too elaborate, especially in the 3rd act. For example, when the lawyer Geir Lippestad says goodbye to Breivik, he refuses to shake his hand which was a good way to end this scene but, instead, he went on with a speech about how his children and grandchildren will stop people like him in the future which was just too heavy-handed. Eventually, even though such scenes were well meant, they didn’t improve the whole narrative after all. Anyway, in spite of its flaws, it was still such a powerful story and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Paul Greengrass’s work.