OCTOBER 25, 2018
I’ll admit it. I love Westerns. Always have, always will.
When you’re a kid, the simplicity of good guys vs. bad guys is very appealing. You could tell who was good and who was bad by externals — what they wore, how they walked, their pose as they would lean up against the bar, etc. When I got older and my tastes began to mature, I became drawn to a different sort of Western — one that was filled with more complexity, with good guys who might not be so pure and bad guys who do what they do not because they’re evil but because circumstances have forced them into a corner.
“The Sisters Brothers” offers a little something different — a look at this all-American of genres through a distinctly non-American eye, thanks to Jacques Audiard, one of the most esteemed of living French directors, helmer of such acclaimed films as “A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone” (both Golden Globe nominees), and “Dheepan,” which won the 2015 Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Clearly Audiard wants to make a traditional American Western. “The Sisters Brothers” is his first film shot in English and boasts a cast made up of A-list talent — Academy Award nominees Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, as well as Emmy Award winner Riz Ahmed (HBO’s “The Night Of”).
“The Sisters Brothers” is a Western that takes the point of view of the bad guys — gunslingers-for-hire Eli Sisters (Reilly) and his younger brother Charlie (Phoenix). They work for a mysterious man called The Commodore (Rutger Hauer in a spooky silent performance), who gives them their latest assignment to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm (Ahmed), whom the Commodore claims stole money from him.
Unbeknownst to the brothers, the Commodore has hired detective John Morris (Gyllenhaal) to find Warm, capture him and deliver him to the brothers, who will undoubtedly torture the prisoner before killing him. Once Morris finds him, Warm explains that he actually a chemist who has developed a formula that will illuminate the gold in a stream. Realizing that the Commodore simply wants to kill the chemist for his formula, Morris decides to throw in with Warm and get him to Gold Rush Country.
Audiard recognizes that, even among bad guys, there are various shades of gray. Eli is a Good Bad Guy — after this last job, he intends to get out of the hitman business, take the money he’s earned and settle down in a small town running a store. Charlie, the Bad Bad Guy, has no interest in joining Eli’s plan to settle down. Still influenced by their psychopathic father, Charlie says that he enjoys killing and intends to keep doing it as long as the money is good.
Whenever a character says that this job is his last one before he gets out, it never goes well. So it happens here when the brothers come face to face with Warm and Morris. There’s a showdown of sorts, but through Audiard’s Gallic viewpoint, it’s not one that you’ll see coming.
But in “The Sisters Brothers,” it’s not the showdown but the journey to get there that counts. Conversations about their directions in life are followed by goofy arguments over a horse and sometimes punctuated by a violent gunfight. More than once, the film seems to meander with one too many digressions. But whenever the contrast in tones do land, they give “The Sisters Brothers” a series of moments that you won’t find in any other Western.
GRADE: B
