CHRIS KNIGHT New true-to-form western is truly fun
In the Old West, fortunes could turn fast. A spider bite, a bear attack, a bullet that missed its mark — or made it.
All these things and more befall the characters in The Sisters Brothers as they make their way from the recently incorporated Territory of Oregon to the newly minted State of California, currently (it’s 1851) in the midst of the Gold Rush.
Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) and his brother, Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix), are the long arm of the lawless. A barely seen crime boss who calls himself The Commodore (Rutger Hauer), has sent the sharpshooting siblings in search of a man named Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed). Money is owed. If gold is not forthcoming, lead will be dispensed.
The film is based on Canadian author Patrick deWitt’s 2011 novel, adapted and directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone), in his English-language debut. It’s thus some outsiders’ take on the genre, which is appropriate when you consider that, when
the Old West was new, so were most of the people to it.
Eli and Charlie are a chatty, complicated pair, pitched somewhere between Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and the gunmen from Pulp Fiction. Charlie is quicker to a fight, a drink and just about anything else you’d care to mention, while Eli is moody to the point of melancholia, though no less reticent to shoot when fraternal duty calls.
They’re joined in their pursuit of Mr. Warm by detective John Morris, whose accent is so neither-here-nor-there that I refuse to believe Jake Gyllenhaal is unaware how it sounds. More likely it’s his character who mistakenly believes it makes him sound educated.
The film clocks in at a solid two hours and ambles along at a deliberate mosey, full of odd elusions. Reilly’s character gets very ill but seems to recover off-screen, while a partnership between Morris and Warm similarly springs up out of nowhere. And at one point a big showdown is teased, then withdrawn.
Not that there isn’t a saddlebag worth of fisticuffs and gunplay, starting with the opening scene, an artistically shot shootout in the dark. Eli and Charlie, like a lot of brothers, can run hot and cold, one moment in a knockdown brawl, the next quietly cutting each other’s hair.
Audiard’s adaptation makes some significant departures from the novel, though I was glad to see that Eli’s obsession with his newfangled toothbrush made it into the screenplay. At one point he notices another character with the same tool, and the two regard each other like a couple of guys who notice they both have the latest model iPhone. And in an act of inspired creativity, the proto-Trump character of Mayfield — first citizen of the town of Mayfield, owner of the Mayfield hotel, etc. — is played by trans actress Rebecca Root.
The Sisters Brothers is also further proof that the western genre remains as relevant as ever, capable of social relevance (Django Unchained), dystopic sci-fi leanings (Westworld, The Rover) and even amendable to superhero outings (Logan). This is a more straight-up example of the form, but nonetheless enjoyable for it.