If anyone thinks that directors don't matter, please direct them to this film. Great actors and acting, but the film was presented in such a way that you felt nothing for the characters. Most of it seemed silly, forced, and contrived.
shareI've never seen better actors in a worse film ...Not for awhile any way IMO.
If anyone thinks that directors don't matter, please direct them to this film.Gavin O'Connor stepped in at very late notice to direct this film. I reckon it shows. I would have loved to have seen what Lynne Ramsay, the original intended director, would have brought to the table.🐭 share
Directors do matter, but so do scriptwriters. This was actually quite a generic Western - in fact more like some one-hour TV episode. The story with the heroine forced to seek help from a former lover to protect her family has been fairly commonplace: the new wrinkles here were that the Natalie character had been forced into prostitution and her husband was an outlaw - though at the same time a rather decent man.
The script with its numerous flashbacks was a mess. Actually the story could not have been simpler, but there were so many flashbacks at what appeared to be numerous inopportune moments that I got confused what scenes belonged to the past and what represented the present. The story began with the wounded Ham telling Jane to run with the child and not to come back because he didn't want her to stand the pain of losing "another" child. Who were after them? It then required six or seven different flashbacks to show why he was shot, that the child that was "lost" belonged to Dan Frost, and that she and her husband had a history with the bad guys. The fights at the end were lackluster and the ending fairly predictable: we all know that her outlaw husband was going to be dead and she would reunite with her former fiancé.
I like a Western with Natalie Portman as the lead but no good acting could have saved this film. It was a bit ironically that while Jane got not only "a" gun but many of them, her skills (if any) were not really needed or even shown in the film. From the film's title, I had expected some kind of Calamity Jane character. Sharon Stone's gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead was at least more campy fun.
Yes, agree with everything that you post.
The flashbacks were confusing, considering that some had dates and some did not. I would have thought you go one way or the other, but not just haphazardly.
Also have mentioned on other threads that to me, the story, for quite a short film, was dragged out to an almost interminable length and that I was extremely disappointed with the staging of the climactic gunfight, where you could barely see what was actually occurring.🐭
It was more of an exercise in style and a character study than an action film. I agree flashbacks were not used optimally... although it could work better on second viewing...
OP is completely wrong about the quality of this film, it's actually very successful at what it tries to do. As for the pace, it was used nicely to create atmosphere, imo.
Director did a good job creating atmosphere and it looked visually good too. Acting performances were perfect.
The film was sort of different, a change of pace.
The script with its numerous flashbacks was a mess. Actually the story could not have been simpler, but there were so many flashbacks at what appeared to be numerous inopportune moments that I got confused what scenes belonged to the past and what represented the present.
The fights at the end were lackluster and the ending fairly predictable: we all know that her outlaw husband was going to be dead and she would reunite with her former fiancé.
It was a bit ironically that while Jane got not only "a" gun but many of them, her skills (if any) were not really needed or even shown in the film. From the film's title, I had expected some kind of Calamity Jane character. Sharon Stone's gunslinger in The Quick and the Dead was at least more campy fun.
Having just seen the movie, this was my feeling too. A decent enough (if overly familiar) plot but while the directing and editing wasn't that great IMO, it was the script that really needed more work.
I'm definitely not a fan of Joel, but the rest of the cast were great and even Joel wasn't by any means, but I was disappointed that this wasn't better.
I was expecting the story to be more about a "typical western" woman having to take up arms to defend herself, and the morality that presents. Instead, we got a pretty standard Rio Bravo siege where the most interesting character to me was bedridden for the whole movie!
To work, tis film needed to either really embrace the "grey" morality it touched on (Ham's change, the Bishops not being cartoon black hats) OR ramp up the tension and make it a straightforward action siege with tons of terror from genuinely scary bad guys. What we got was a limp failure to do either, IMO.
Actually I have...it's called "The Nice Guys"
shareI think some of the directors blame should be shared by the writers and producers. Emmerich does what he can from his back and Edgerton is the only thing close to great.
I think the real poison here is Natalie Hershlag. She brings the same coldness accompanied with an air of pretension to every role I've ever seen her in. Her and Michelle Williams are still Weinstein's little darlings, so of course they keep on getting work! (And work on their faces, too.)
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Jane had great oral hygiene giving the lack of research in dentistry at this period
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