Taking a look on Netflix UK,I discovered that on the same day that Netflix's Adam Sandler Western (!)The Ridiculous 6 was put on the site,that another 2015 Western had appeared,which led to me getting ready to enter the Wild West,slowly.
View on the film:
Making his debut,the screenplay by John Maclean (who directed a music vid for his brother David's band Django Django) soaks the film in a dour,Gothic atmosphere,with Maclean's opening of flashbacks to Scotland giving Cavendish's search for Rose Ross a doom-laden coat.
Keeping the movie to a handful of characters, Maclean counters the warm sincerity of Cavendish with the rustic grit of Selleck,who sees Cavendish's love as a road to a fistful of dollars.
Helping to bring the film into town after working with Maclean on a short film,Michael Fassbender gives an excellent performance as Selleck,with Fassbender placing a gap between Selleck & Cavendish with a firm belief that the rules of the West outlaw everything else in life.
Finding himself alone in the Wild West, Kodi Smit-McPhee gives a great performance as Cavendish,thanks to Smit-McPhee's keeping Cavendish's love-struck warmth burning to the titles parting shots.
Opening with stars dashing across the screen, Maclean & Robbie Ryan gives the Wild West a superb,strange atmosphere. Set in the US (with Scottish leads) and filmed in New Zealand,Maclean and Ryan give the title a tense supernatural atmosphere,with "paper windows" and mysteriously disappearing outlaws placing Cavendish's search half way into an alt world. Showing the beautiful New Zealand landscape (does it ever look bad?) in stylish, restrained shots,Mclean gives the movie a starkly haunting post-apocalypse appearance.
Avoiding any salons or bar room brawls,Mclean makes the outdoor locations look like nature is reclaiming the Wild West,as Selleck and Cavendish find themselves surrounded by wilderness for miles,with brittle gunshots being the only thing to break the silence of the slow West.
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