More than just bromantic bonding in this western
The Sisters Brothers
(out of 4) Starring Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal. Directed by Jacques Audiard. Opens Friday at Scotiabank Theatre. 120 minutes. 14A
France’s Jacques Audiard isn’t the first name you’d think of to direct a western. His previous work dealt with outsiders and drifters in his native Europe, in films like A Prophet and the Palme d’Or-winning Dheepan.
Which actually makes him just right for The Sisters Broth
ers, a tale of sibling rivalry that is far from your average oater. Audiard and his co-screenwriter Thomas Bidegain base their screenplay on Canadian author Patrick deWitt’s award-winning novel, which challenges conventional ideas about this most macho of genres.
Equal parts comedy, drama, love story and horror story, the saga simply refuses to be easily lassoed.
Eli and Charlie Sisters (John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix) are brothers and hit men in the Old West of1851, cowpokes who will casually pull the trigger for cash. They’re bad men but not entirely unlikeable ones, apart from their constant squabbling.
Eli even has time for hygiene, having discovered a new invention called the toothbrush that could make his breath kissing sweet.
His gnarlier younger bro Charlie remains resolutely filthy and single-minded, although he still carries a torch for a long-lost love.
The bros are pretty good at what they do, if you overlook a bloody prologue where a botched nighttime house raid leaves multiple bodies along with some feeble excuses.
Eli and Charlie work for a truly bad guy, an Oregon City crime boss named Commodore (Rutger Hauer), who is barely glimpsed.
The brothers are tasked with tracking and eliminating a mysterious gent named Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), a prospector and chemist whom the Commodore claims has wronged him. The truth turns out to be more complicated than that: Hermann has developed a covetable concoction that magically makes gold glow in the water — but which also has serious side effects.
Also on Hermann’s trail, en route to California and its Gold Rush, is undercover detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). His motives are considerably murkier than Eli’s and Char- lie’s, but his desire for bromantic bonding is every bit as intense.
At root, this is a movie about the complications of male relationships. All four lead actors do a superb job in defining characters whom Audiard hasn’t spent much time introducing.
There’s scant room for women in this shambolic scenario, but two help taper the testosterone, if only briefly: Rebecca Root as a no-guff frontier town mayor/brothel owner and Allison Tolman as a prostitute who locates Eli’s sweeter side, which he’s been struggling to find.
Audiard has told interviewers that he wasn’t the least bit interested in the geography of his film, which marks his Englishlanguage debut, but Benoit Debie’s grand cinematography suggests otherwise. Obviously awestruck by the natural beauty of his surroundings, Debie frequently pulls the camera back to wordlessly contemplate it.