Post by joekiddlouischama on Mar 14, 2019 7:48:29 GMT
Has anyone else seen The Kid, a new Western directed by Vincent D'Onofrio? I have viewed it twice and may return for one more showing. It is not an outstanding Western, but it is worth a view, especially if you possess an affinity for the genre. The film, which offers a variation on the Billy the Kid narrative, is tense and intense, edgy and atmospheric, and often quite engrossing and exciting. Dane DeHaan offers an incredibly iconographic Billy the Kid. His character could have used a little more development, but he portrays the Western icon as an ambiguous and ambivalent figure, as neither a hero nor a villain. Ethan Hawke, meanwhile, plays the famous Sheriff Pat Garrett, depicting him as a somewhat mysterious and ultimately empathetic figure. Young Jake Schur, meanwhile, makes a solid acting debut as the movie's genuine protagonist, while Chris Pratt plays the chief villain.
The Kid is quite a nice film visually, offering commendable cinematography in terms of both composition and lighting. It uses both natural cross-light and authentic New Mexico locations to create some impressive shots and a sense of atmosphere. (In one memorable and fairly low-angle interior shot, for instance, amber sunlight pours into a saloon from the outside, illuminating a lawman drinking at the bar and beyond him the saloon doors. The lawman, bar, and saloon doors are darkly backlit by the sunlight, which also captures hazy dust floating in the air.) The movie makes effective use of both high and low angles, and the shootouts and incidents of violence are well-timed, well-edited, and impactful.
Stylistically, The Kid's influence seems to be more revisionist in nature; thematically, the movie's genre influence appears more traditionalist. It offers some compelling morals and axioms, but they tend to be overstated, as if expressed by some secular itinerant cinematic genre preacher. Similarly, while the acting is generally effective, Hawke and Pratt both become overwrought on occasion. The result of the occasionally overstated dialogue and occasionally overwrought acting is a somewhat clunky quality that sometimes appears and resurfaces. Contributing to this element is the occasional anachronistic contemporary saying, such as Billy asking Garrett, "Who does that?"
To some extent, The Kid also suffers from what so many post-1980s Westerns have suffered from: they try to imitate the surrealism or Gothic elements from the seminal revisionist Westerns directed by Sergio Leone in the 1960s and from High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973), and the result feels strained. This straining is fairly minimal in The Kid, but one can occasionally feel it, most notably through a score that—like some of the movie's other aspects—is sometimes too overt. Since the 1990s, too many Westerns have sought to impose mood and theme rather than capturing those dimensions, and The Kid cannot entirely escape that unfortunate contemporary tendency.
Still, the film is genuinely atmospheric, fairly creative, and visually evocative, and it offers a reminder that quality filmmaking is not dependent upon grand concepts and huge budgets. After both of my viewings, I deemed The Kid "pretty good/good," and I especially recommend it to anyone with an interest in Westerns. The movie makes me want to view earlier Billy the Kid renditions, such as The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958), starring Paul Newman, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973), starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, once again. I have not seen those Westerns since November 1998.
The Kid is quite a nice film visually, offering commendable cinematography in terms of both composition and lighting. It uses both natural cross-light and authentic New Mexico locations to create some impressive shots and a sense of atmosphere. (In one memorable and fairly low-angle interior shot, for instance, amber sunlight pours into a saloon from the outside, illuminating a lawman drinking at the bar and beyond him the saloon doors. The lawman, bar, and saloon doors are darkly backlit by the sunlight, which also captures hazy dust floating in the air.) The movie makes effective use of both high and low angles, and the shootouts and incidents of violence are well-timed, well-edited, and impactful.
Stylistically, The Kid's influence seems to be more revisionist in nature; thematically, the movie's genre influence appears more traditionalist. It offers some compelling morals and axioms, but they tend to be overstated, as if expressed by some secular itinerant cinematic genre preacher. Similarly, while the acting is generally effective, Hawke and Pratt both become overwrought on occasion. The result of the occasionally overstated dialogue and occasionally overwrought acting is a somewhat clunky quality that sometimes appears and resurfaces. Contributing to this element is the occasional anachronistic contemporary saying, such as Billy asking Garrett, "Who does that?"
To some extent, The Kid also suffers from what so many post-1980s Westerns have suffered from: they try to imitate the surrealism or Gothic elements from the seminal revisionist Westerns directed by Sergio Leone in the 1960s and from High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973), and the result feels strained. This straining is fairly minimal in The Kid, but one can occasionally feel it, most notably through a score that—like some of the movie's other aspects—is sometimes too overt. Since the 1990s, too many Westerns have sought to impose mood and theme rather than capturing those dimensions, and The Kid cannot entirely escape that unfortunate contemporary tendency.
Still, the film is genuinely atmospheric, fairly creative, and visually evocative, and it offers a reminder that quality filmmaking is not dependent upon grand concepts and huge budgets. After both of my viewings, I deemed The Kid "pretty good/good," and I especially recommend it to anyone with an interest in Westerns. The movie makes me want to view earlier Billy the Kid renditions, such as The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958), starring Paul Newman, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973), starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, once again. I have not seen those Westerns since November 1998.
