‘The Unholy Trinity’ is far from the best of the West
“The Unholy Trinity” — 2 stars
“The Unholy Trinity” is a reminder that they don’t make ’em like they used to — and maybe that’s a good thing. A pokey, low-budget Western enlivened by a couple of aging stars happily hamming it up, it’s the kind of B movie they used to program before the feature and after the cartoon in the old days.
These days, we call it “straight to streaming,” which is where this undercooked frontier shoot-out belongs. Seeing it in a theater at megaplex prices is the equivalent of a stagecoach robbery.
After opening with a hanging, “Trinity” ambles to the Montana mining town of the title, a two-horse burg overseen by Sheriff Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan, under heavy whiskers and a heavier Irish brogue). A naive young man, Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard), arrives on a mission to avenge his father, who was framed by the town’s previous sheriff, who now lies dead under mysterious circumstances.
After talking Henry down from shooting the wrong lawman, the sheriff takes the kid under his wing and fills him in on the local history. It’s byzantine and bloody, and after a while, you’re not sure who shot whom or why you should care.
There’s a Blackfoot woman up in the hills, Running Cub, played stoically by Q’orianka Kilcher, the Pocahontas of 2005’s “The New World,” and the townsfolk of Trinity are itching to bring her down for a lynching, convinced she’s the killer. And just for the heck of it, here’s a cackling Samuel L. Jackson as St. Christopher, a mystery man who helps and hinders both sides, the better to pit them against each other.
Throw in a few trigger-happy bad men, some fresh-faced prostitutes and a swinging-door saloon, and every cliché is present and accounted for. The best westerns have always used those clichés as a foundation for examining human nature amid the clash of civilization and our more brutal impulses. The average oater, by contrast, treats them as merely a setting for action. “The Unholy Trinity” struggles to come up to average.
Lessard especially seems unable to make much sense of Henry, whom Lee Zachariah’s screenplay casts as a tenderfoot who becomes a beady-eyed sharpshooter much too quickly. Journeyman director Richard Gray (“Murder at Yellowstone City,” “Robert the Bruce”) keeps the horses moving, which is the western equivalent of directing traffic, and it must be said that there are no outright collisions.
But thank the Lord and John Ford that Brosnan and Jackson are here, or “The Unholy Trinity” would be fatally dull. Pro that he is, Brosnan understands the assignment and how much energy he can bring to his savvy sheriff — the movie’s true hero — without tipping into overacting.
Jackson has no such qualms, and he’s as broad as a barn playing the movie’s amoral Puck figure, a former enslaved man who’s wilier than all of Trinity’s white folks. There’s a pot of gold St. Christopher is after that’s at the bottom of the plot, but unfortunately, there’s not much at the bottom of this movie.
Schedule “The Unholy Trinity” for a slow Sunday afternoon’s streaming. And then think seriously about renting “The Searchers” instead.
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A Roadside Attractions release. Rated R. Contains violence, language and some sexual material. 93 minutes.