The Power of the Dog
Directed by Jane Campion ★★★★
A toxic cowboy rides toward ruin.
Jane Campion’s first feature film in 12 years “plays like a master class in sustained dread,” said Leah Greenblatt in Entertainment Weekly. In 1925 Montana, a cruel rancher played by Benedict Cumberbatch terrorizes everyone around him. When Phil Burbank isn’t mocking his brother, George, he is bullying even easier targets, such as the feminine son of a widowed boarding-house proprietress. And when George impulsively marries the widow and brings her home, Phil’s menacing behavior quickly drives Kirsten Dunst’s Rose to drink while Phil and the younger man “begin to circle one another” with an “odd thrumming chemistry.” Phil is an absolute zealot about policing male behavior, and “if your latent-homosexuality alert hasn’t gone off yet, it may be time to calibrate the settings,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. Still, “nothing in The Power of the Dog goes quite as you expect”; even Phil proves capable of surprises.
While Cumberbatch’s “astounding” performance is a career best, it’s the younger Kodi SmitMcPhee whose unknown heart makes this such a “rivetingly tense” movie, said David Ehrlich in IndieWire.com. You have to admire “the shiv-like stealthiness of Campion’s approach.” The Oscar-winning director of The Piano has made “a brilliant, murderous fable about masculine strength that’s so diamond-toothed its victims are already half dead by the time they see the first drop of their own blood.” (In select theaters now; on Netflix Dec. 1)