Movie review: 'The Sisters Brothers' mines Western adventure for humor, heart
“The Sisters Brothers” - ★ ★ ★
“The Sisters Brothers,” a Western set in Oregon and California during the heights of the Gold Rush, opens with an arresting scene: a shootout filmed almost entirely in darkness, with the sparks from popping guns its only illumination. The sequence ends with a terrifying barn fire, and the spectral image of a horse running away from the carnage in flames.
From the get-go, then, it's obvious that “The Sisters Brothers” will subvert typical Western spectacle even as it indulges it. A schematically familiar but gently funny picaresque reminiscent of “True Grit” and other mission-driven adventures, this adaptation of Patrick deWitt's novel doesn't necessarily break new ground. But it aerates what's already been well-trod, offering an alternately pitiless and tenderhearted lens on such hardy themes as filial loyalty and American progress at its most naive and voraciously destructive.
John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play Eli and Charlie Sisters, accomplished hit men who are enlisted by a powerful businessman named the Commodore to assassinate Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), who the Commodore says has stolen a piece of intellectual property from him. A detective named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) is already on the case, tracking Warm so that all the assassins need to do when they meet up with their quarry is fire. “The Sisters Brothers” traces the title characters' event-filled journey to their appointed deed, which includes the ambushes, bar fights and visits to brothels that one would expect from a movie dedicated to the most classic conventions of its genre.
Luckily, this particular iteration also includes some amusing interactions, between Eli and Charlie and between Warm and Morris, the latter of whom speaks with florid elegance about forming a utopian community (the location is one of the film's funniest punchlines). Directed by the fine French filmmaker Jacques Audiard from a script he wrote with Thomas Bidegain, “The Sisters Brothers” is spiked with sequences of bloody violence and suffering. But there's a sweetness to the movie - underlined by Alexandre Desplat's gorgeously lyrical score - that gives it an irresistible heart.
In large part that is thanks to its superb cast, all of whom deliver playful, sincere performances. Like the John Ford and Robert Altman films it evokes, the universe of “The Sisters Brothers” is grand, mythic and overwhelmingly male. But the filmmakers seem more interested in critiquing traditional macho notions than valorizing them.
The mid-19th century during which the film is set is a time of change and innovation; Eli becomes an early adopter of a newfangled gizmo called the toothbrush, which plays a role in a perfectly on-point moment later on. The philosophical showdown between highfalutin' democratic ideals and Darwinian lust for money, power and prestige becomes the real center of “The Sisters Brothers,” as each man casts his lot with a radically different - and hugely consequential - version of the future.
<b>Starring:</b> Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed
<b>Directed by:</b> Jacques Audiard
<b>Other:</b> An Annapurna Pictures release. In limited release. Rated R for language, some sexual situations and violence. 121 minutes