Nicolas Cage
“BUTCHER’S CROSSING” My rating: B (Hulu)
105 minutes | MPAA rating: R
An unintended consequence of the rise of streaming services is that the once-ubiquitous Western has been pulled back from the brink of extinction.
The oater is, if no longer the box office giant of old, at least widely available over the Net. What’s more, filmmakers are making new Westerns.
Granted, most of them are cheap, indifferently acted and recycle the same old revenge plot…which makes an aberration like “Butcher’s Crossing” that much more remarkable.
Directed and co-written by Gabe Polsky, “Butcher’s Crossing” is nothing less than a landlocked Moby Dick, a tale of obsession and madness on a sea of grass.
Our Ishmael is young Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger), an Easterner who has dropped out of college to pursue his dreams of adventure in the Wild West.
Now, a decade after the end of the Civil War, Will has arrived in the ramshackle Kansas burg of Butcher’s Crossing determined to hook up with a party of buffalo hunters so he can experience the wonders of this new world first hand.
Will finds himself financing a hunting expedition under the leadership of Miller (Nicholas Cage, with shaved head and untamed beard).
A veteran buffalo hunter, Miller claims to have years ago discovered an isolated valley in the Rockies absolutely jammed with bison. And not the raggedy leftovers being brought in by other hunters; these are prime animals, Miller claims. Their skins will bring top dollar.
There are two other members of the party. The one-handed cook Charlie (Xander Berkeley, unrecognizable) is an old coot whose religious mania may be an indicator of more serious psychological problems.
And then there’s Fred (Jeremy Bobb), a surly skinner who prepares the hides to be hauled back to what passes for civilization.
For all his outward show of competence, Miller is an unsettling risk taker, leading his party into the heart of Indian country (they don’t encounter any natives but come across the gruesome remains of a fellow who did) and choosing a route which has them running dangerously low on water.
Eventually they reach the hidden valley in the mountains. And it’s exactly what Miller promised.
He starts shooting…and won’t stop. Not when they have harvested three times as many skins as they can haul out. Miller appears to be on a quest to kill every last buffalo.
Which is bad enough from an ecological standpoint, but it also delays the group’s return to Kansas. Trapped by an early snowstorm, they’re stranded until spring, short on provisions and with inadequate shelter.
Under these circumstances the worst in men comes out.
The screenplay by Polsky, Liam Satre-Meloy and John Williams is spare and economical. And while the film cannot overcome a meandering last act that left me wanting more, the journey to get there is gripping and harrowing.
The acting is solid without making a big deal of things. One half expects Cage to slip into full eye-rolling mode to depict the madness of this prairie Ahab, but he never overplays his hand. In fact, his quiet menace is far more intimidating than angry histrionics.
As our young hero, Hechinger is mostly placed in the position of observer. Yet I was particularly impressed by the way this kid is drained by months of fear and deprivation. He starts out frat boy and ends up practically an old feller.
Special kudos to cinematographer David Gallego, whose images of a largely uninhabited landscape are mesmerizing (the film was short largely on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana), and to editor Nick Pezzillo, who creates some hallucinogenic montages reflecting the characters’ mental and emotional deterioration.
The production values are solid, from the equipment carried by the party to the wrangling of the bufalo…if I didn’t know better I’d say some of these big shaggies can actually act.
(One small complaint…when will Hollywood realize that there exists in Kansas no town from which you can view a mountain? Just sayin’.)
Finally, the film doesn’t address the near-extermination of the American bison directly…although the opening and closing credits do feature old photos of piles of buffalo bones and bales of skins. The filmmakers have enough faith in their audience that they saw no need to preach — and it pays off.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 