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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Bloodier, less simple 9/10 In ‘No Country for Old Men’ the Coen brothers return to Texas and the noir-western hybrid of their first film ‘Blood Simple‘. An adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s equallly bloodythirsty and apocalyptic novel of the same name, the film captures the spirit of the author’s work while providing a platform for their [...]

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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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