The movie is set
in the pre-Civil War West. The brothers, Eli and Charlie (John C. Reilly and
Joaquin Phoenix), are well known mercenaries working in Oregon and California.
Their latest job involves stalking a chemist named Hermann (Riz Ahmed) who is
making his way to San Francisco to try his luck during the Gold Rush. He's
developed something that he believes will help his odds at finding a fortune
and the brothers' employer wants him dead. While the brothers catch up to Hermann,
a pretentious scout named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) stays on his tale and
reports on his whereabouts. The film covers the chase, the showdown, and the
fallout of all this, but not in the ways I expected. You see, the focus is the
brothers, not the chase. Eli and Charlie are moving in different directions in
life. The life of killing is weighing on Eli whereas it's the only thing
keeping Charlie going. Eli feels the pull to be more civilized. Charlie likes
being drunken and feral. It's how they negotiate their divergent paths that
drives the movie.
The action
certainly isn't what lured Jacques Audiard to direct this. Despite the movie
being filled with gunfights and violence, we rarely see it. Audiard either
shoots the gunfights from a distance with a super wide shot or focuses on the
people in the other rooms listening as it happens. The brothers overcome
significant opposition time and time again. How they overcome it doesn't
matter. It only matters that we accept that they are great at what they do.
This isn't about living by the sword and dying by the sword. It's about the
emotional toll of living by the sword and when that becomes too much.
The movie plays
more as a collection of smaller adventures, divided up by what city they are in
or a specific challenge they face in a leg of their journey. And that makes
sense. If the movie doesn't care about the shootouts, then why should it care
about building everything toward one?
Reilly and Phoenix
are terrific in the roles. Reilly is a master at that wounded puppy dog thing.
Even though he's killed numerous people, you just want to hug him and tell him
everything is going to be alright. You want him to be happy, although you
aren't sure he can find a way to be. Phoenix is more of a raw nerve. He embraces
his demons and tries to find pride in them. There's almost an Of Mice and
Men dynamic between the brothers. Eli is always fixing Charlie's messes but
can't get himself to leave him behind. Gyllenhaal has fun being a little
insufferable. He doesn't exaggerate it too much, but you can see how someone
could find him charming at first then exhausting after a few hours. Riz Ahmed
is good at finding different ways to playing men who think they have the
answers in life. This is a more agreeable form of it. I enjoyed the difference
in the Ahmed/Gyllenhaal power dynamic here versus when they worked together in
Nightcrawler.
The more I watch
Westerns, the more I realize that the appeal isn't the story. It's about the
place and the characters. These are stories about men essentially running from
society for a place where they can define how they live. That very much applies
to The Sisters Brothers. It's a movie that pulls back whenever it's
about to be a certain kind of movie. It gets sincere whenever it's about to be
a comedy. It shies away from showing the gunfights to make sure no one calls it
an action movie. It thwarts plans before they get going. It builds toward
climaxes that don't end up mattering. And I didn't mind any of this, because I
cared about the lead characters and was happy to go wherever they took me. I
liked the look of the film. It felt real, not like sets. The dialogue was
comfortably anachronistic, opting to focus on lines to be understood over being
accurate. It's not my favorite recent Western, but it has a unique tone and
stayed consistent. That's all I can really ask for.
Verdict (?):
Weakly Recommend
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