Demob Happy

Ten past three
5/10
The release of ‘3:10 to Yuma‘, coinciding with that of ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford‘, got some critics excited about the re-birth of the Western. While two films from Hollywood in one year hardly signifies a renaissance, Ed Harris’ 2008 Western ‘Appaloosa’ certainly suggests there is life left [...]

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Fine revisionist Western
8/10
‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford‘ is a thoughtful and atmospheric film about the American outlaw myth. A careful and occasionally brutal revisionist western in the mould of Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece ‘Unforgiven‘, Andrew (’Chopper‘) Dominik’s epic has been crafted with a painstaking, sometimes self-consciously meticulous eye. Like Eastwood’s Oscar [...]

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Break for the border
9/10
Cormac McCarthy is a unique voice in American fiction. His flowing polysyndetonic prose forms a poetic vision of the American West that is almost Biblical in its rythmns. The Border Trilogy is a fable about a last generation of cowboys - John Grady Cole and Billy Parnham - drawn into [...]

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