(Three different characters in "The Harder They Fall" talk about their experiences with domestic abuse.) The entire project feels like a bit of a lark or an indulgence, until the point when it wipes the cocky grin off its face, embraces the melodramatic aspects of its central storyline, and becomes an earnest romance, a family tragedy, and a quasi-mythological story about how violence begets more violence, whether it's experienced in a saloon, on dusty streets, or in the privacy of a family home. They bear as much relation to reality as the events of a dreamscape Western like " The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," "The Quick and the Dead," and " Posse" (to name just three Westerns this one cribs from) or a gangster movie like " Dillinger" and " The Untouchables," the major events of which were so ludicrous that they might as well have been taking place on another planet, or in an alternate dimension.īut this is a feature of the movie, not a bug. Western history buffs should be warned, or at least notified, that while many of the major characters in the story share the same names as actual people who lived and died in the Old West, including Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Stagecoach Mary, Jim Beckwourth, and Cherokee Bill, the events they take part in are mostly made-up nonsense. Samuel uses a very wide screen to frame shots that employ a lot of negative space and contain layers of information you have to focus on to appreciate, and gifts his actors with precious moments where their characters are allowed to listen to each other, silently glance at each other, and ponder their next move, often while enduring death-stares from enemies armed to the teeth. It's a pity that this Netflix film will likely be seen mainly on handheld devices, laptops, and iPads, because (like other late-2021 releases, such as " The French Dispatch" and "Dune") it was plainly conceived with a movie house in mind. Jeymes Samuel, who cowrote, directed, and scored the movie, has not just studied the works of the directors he emulates, but understands what they were doing with image and sound, and feels it, surely in the way that he feels the craft involved in music he performs and produces under his stage name The Bullitts. "The Harder They Fall" is a bloody pleasure: a revenge Western packed with memorable characters played by memorable actors, each scene and moment staged for voluptuous beauty and kinetic power.
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