Review of The Claim

Not knowing what The Claim was fully about, I jumped into the movie anyway. Throughout the first half of the movie, it moved slowly, in some ways it seemed as to present the stark and remote environment of the West, but the pace was not always replaced with atmosphere. The plot was also ambiguous and confusing, probably due to the initial cabin scene in which things were not laid out clearly, the "Claim" exchange was downplayed as almost a side thing. It was not helped by by the sudden disappearance of a beard from the old Dillon to a younger one in a flashback, at the same time a bearded Burn appears in the cabin. This lead to a lot of who was whom, who owned "Thy Kingdom Come" along other false chases based on faulty assumptions until the plot slowly unfolded.

The plot picks up later on, when we find the significance of each character and how they are intertwined with others, along with the fact that no matter what decision each person takes, it will have devastative consequences for other people. It eventually leads to the ending in which we realize how true Burns' (the original owner of the cabin) feeling was when he agreed to the swap.

The cinematography really showed the vast space there was out in the West. With ever expanding views of the mountains up close and in the distance. Blurring of the images was also used, a technique rarely used in a period piece, but it was effective viaually.