Missing is one half a great "post-Western" western, and one half schlock. What happened?
Ron Howard is too much a part of Hollywood... He thinks he is getting down and dirty with some of the violence in this film, but the fact is, the real situations depicted here would be far stronger and far more cold-blooded than Howard is willing to get. This film needs a major re-write by Sam Peckinpah or Clint Eastwood.
We all know that the killings of the two errant cowboys in Eastwood's Unforgiven are actually far more horrifying than the final shoot-out, despite the fact that they are entirely expected, and that there would be no movie without them, and despite the fact that the final shoot-out goes Gothic and grand-guinol on us. But Eastwood depends on this juxtaposition - the killings of the cowboys are portrayed realistically, the final shoot-out is the stuff myth is made from, the whole point of the movie.
Howard actually misses this bet; the grandfather Tommy Lee Jones plays gets too sentimental for the biography of him we are given - he needs to be as hard as the creepy witch-guy he needs to confront to save his granddaughters. And as with every male director who tries to get feminist on us, the daughter and granddaughters are annoying pains in the behind; if I were Jones, I'd have let them suffer.
What is really good about the film is it's magnificent cinematography; and I respect Howard for the risks he was willing to take to make this film. I just wish he had gone all the way with it.
Ron Howard is too much a part of Hollywood... He thinks he is getting down and dirty with some of the violence in this film, but the fact is, the real situations depicted here would be far stronger and far more cold-blooded than Howard is willing to get. This film needs a major re-write by Sam Peckinpah or Clint Eastwood.
We all know that the killings of the two errant cowboys in Eastwood's Unforgiven are actually far more horrifying than the final shoot-out, despite the fact that they are entirely expected, and that there would be no movie without them, and despite the fact that the final shoot-out goes Gothic and grand-guinol on us. But Eastwood depends on this juxtaposition - the killings of the cowboys are portrayed realistically, the final shoot-out is the stuff myth is made from, the whole point of the movie.
Howard actually misses this bet; the grandfather Tommy Lee Jones plays gets too sentimental for the biography of him we are given - he needs to be as hard as the creepy witch-guy he needs to confront to save his granddaughters. And as with every male director who tries to get feminist on us, the daughter and granddaughters are annoying pains in the behind; if I were Jones, I'd have let them suffer.
What is really good about the film is it's magnificent cinematography; and I respect Howard for the risks he was willing to take to make this film. I just wish he had gone all the way with it.