This is an extended review from the Toronto International Film Festival, where Butcher’s Crossing had its world premiere. It doesn’t have a release date yet.
Butcher’s Crossing is a neo-western drama with a descent into psychological madness. This is a film about questioning the myths of the American West, heroism and masculinity, and man’s control over nature. Nicolas Cage continues his string of subtle but compelling roles as a seasoned buffalo hunter with an obsession, and the film offers some beautiful vistas. Unfortunately, its traditional script offers few surprises and little insight. A dark and ultimately unmemorable film that nevertheless tells an important story.
Set in 1874, a time on the American frontier, mass migration and exploration dominated the minds of impressionable young men hoping to prove themselves in the Wild West. We’ve seen many stories from this period, including a slew of survival thrillers about man’s attempts to tame nature, but few films have shed any light on the horrible manners in which humans attempted to tame nature . The best bits of Butcher’s Crossing show how the commercial and state-sanctioned (and sponsored) hunt of the American bison drove bloodthirsty men to massacre the species—and starved Native American populations directly and drove them from their homes into the Native American reservations.
The film follows Will (Fred Hechinger), a young Harvard student who drops out of school and decides that a real man is not found buried in books and studies, but in the wild, surviving against the elements and the very manly act accomplishes hunting innocents, docile and defenseless animals with a mighty rifle while standing calmly at a distance. To accomplish this ordeal, he travels to Kansas, once a place where buffalo abounded in numbers they resembled a sea of black fur, but now there are few animals left to massacre for their fur and let their corpses rot.
So what can a young, idealistic boy do but hire the baddest hunter there is? This is a man who looks like he might be the ancestor of Marlon Brando’s Kurtz apocalypse now, a Captain Ahab of the land who looks like Nicolas Cage is preparing to play Kratos, but with a cowboy hat to take you on a journey to track down a mythical herd that the hunter once saw years ago, from which nobody believes is real though – a herd of premium skins that will fetch a very pretty penny. Of course, completing this journey is easier said than done, and between the elements, the treacherous roads, and Cage’s Miller obsessed with eliminating every last buffalo on the planet, men’s resolve will be tested, their masculinity challenged , when the young lad begins to wonder if human nature and the myth of the West was all he hoped it would be.
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Cage’s performance is another nuanced one, as Miller is obsessive and ruthless, hiding years of work, sacrifice and pain in a few smoldering looks. Hechinger, meanwhile, captures Will’s slow descent into madness and despair, and sees all his ideals and dreams of heroism shattered with each new defenseless buffalo that Miller enthusiastically mows down. It’s true: this is a somber film, and those with a low tolerance for images of dead animals might want to steer clear of the hundreds of shots of buffalo falling dead.
Butcher’s Crossing strike a great balance of grandiose and awe-inspiring views that make you root for the thrill of these adventurers as they traverse the Colorado Territory and juxtapose it frame by frame of the blood-soaked hunters mowing down buffalo and skinning them, then theirs discard organs. And yet, despite a poignant commentary (mostly relegated to end credits) about the total annihilation of the American bison and its impact on Native Americans, Butcher’s Crossing struggles to find something new about the themes it presents. There are certainly moments of suspense, but they’re fairly predictable, and you’ll be hard pressed to find anything particularly illuminating in the story. This isn’t the fault of the cast, who are clearly trying to dig deeper, but the film’s running time (1 hour and 45 minutes) doesn’t leave them much leeway to play with the script, which remains superficial thematic and characterization.
Butcher’s Crossing ends as a conventional, if rather gnarly, neo-western about the horrors behind the mythos of the American West. It may not break the mold, but hey, if you’ve ever wanted to see Nicolas Cage show off his best Brando while wearing a cowboy hat, there’s still some fun here.
#Butcher #Crossing #Review #IGN
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