The Hi-Lo Country

This is a wonderful movie produced by Martin Scorcese's group and is the best contemporary western I've seen since "Unforgiven". In some ways it is like a Cormac McCarthy novel brought to life. It has a mature and literate screenplay by Walon Green, is well acted by Billy Crudup and Woody Harrelson, has strong supporting performances by a large and perfectly cast group of actors (including Patricia Arquette, Katy Jurado, Sam Elliott, and Penelope Cruz), is beautifully photographed by Oliver Stapleton against spectacular backdrops in New Mexico, is very well directed by Stephen Frears, and has a haunting score by the superb Carter Burwell. Only an overly sentimental last scene weakens an otherwise great film, but the movie is still well worth seeing.

I really enjoyed this ''modern'' western about two young war veterans coming back home from the war zone and trying to make a living by working as old-fashioned cowboys. Pete Calder ( Billy Crudup ) is the shy and reserved one, Big Boy ( Woody Harrelson ) the risk taker with the biggest mouth and smoothest bluffing skills. Their friendship is threatened by the lovely Mona ( Patriccia Arquette ); an adulteress, sending in mixed signals to both of the boys.

You know, I sometimes don't get it why good movies get low or mediocre scores. The way I see it, this movie has its flaws, but it is almost as good as the recent Brokeback Mountain. I really like this epic story about unreachable love and jealousy at someone you consider as a true friend. Add the intense bar fights, gorgeous scenery and a top cast, I'd say this is a very good movie. The only thing I have to comment is that some of the characters just don't get so much attention as they deserve ( like the Mexican guy or Hoover Young ). It felt as if their characters had an important role in the novel, but there just wasn't the time for them in this movie to give them their deserved deep layer. Alas, I can live with that.

People walked out of this film, presumably in disgust, perhaps because they were too hip for woody harrelson. I'm glad this film pissed people off - it proves it was stupidly honest, stupidly nostalgic, stupidly big-hearted and not cynical, clever, PC nor anti-PC, not a mockery of anything. It's an American film by a British director, and like Lolita, boils thick Americanisms down to crystals of statement, taste, elan. How could anyone walk out on the fat man yodelling as the camera dollied in to that tight close-up?! It was a gem of a shot, a little gauche perhaps, not unlike the marlboro country the film rolls through, and the naked desire for the days when men were MEN - with winning hands, whiskey shooters and a tasty redhead named Mona... But this isn't leering masculinity bristling with three day growth! There is a notable absense of guns (for a western), and when they appear they are not sharp and shiny but heavy, tarnished and chunky. This is MC Solaar's nouveau western - cutting up slow shy grins, dusty scuffles, mewling coyotes and a lugubrious soundtrack heavy with sentimental strings, trumpets and the convenient pause for punctuation. This is true Hollywood, and I mean that as a compliment. It was one of those rare occasions where suddenly you see the film as more style than substance. That's why it was showing in Darlinghurst and not the multiplexes! Because of Woody Harrelson - so stupidly generous, stupidly the big man with his big scruples and big square jaw - it is a film that could so easily slip by, scoffed at, discounted for wearing its heart upon its sleeve, pinned not far below the stars and stripes and the silver star for service to country, mateship as tight as knuckles, horses with bottom and all that glory.

It's a movie for Kerouac, he loved this kind of carousing and childishness. Here, life is Hi and the cattle lo, plain Lo, yet another adopted child of Scorsese and his deep deep pockets. "From the depths of my reputation I bring you..." How dare he! Kidnapping the history of American film, like he was god's gift to world cinema, doing it all as a public service. But its worth it for Billy Crudup with his old man's shoulders, Billy with his switchblade, Steve with his necktie, straight six and coronary, LB and Bigboy - it all comes down to Bigboy - the backbone of the film, the gut-feeling and laboured gasp of this weighty piece of cinema.

It's old-school treatment, all sinew and gristle, bloody hooves; pretty dresses, buddy bottles and mexican girls who visit fortune-telling witches. It's a film which doesn't teach America's children to express their anger with words not weapons. No, like Apache tank-killers and cruise missles flattening Serbian houses, it tells Americans to go hard or go home - take it square on the chin, tear those clothes off and take whatever gratification you can get whilst still being the best man, the best friend, a good man with a natural feel for horses. It's homestyle American apple pie, all fragrance and warm pressure, like a horse nibbling oats out of the palm of your hand. So rope em and rape em cause nothing's keeping a good man down cept for a bullet in the chest or a pair of wide open thighs... And while I bluster, it's all poetry in the Hi-lo country, with its bloated cattle and californian dreams, snow on the ranges and the good ol' boys, we're just telling it like it is...

Further notes. The preview contains many scenes that are not in the film : wartime footage, bigboy coming back for pete in the blizzard. In fact the preview contains all the elements superfluous to the film. It is not the story of a woman coming between two friends, it's a story about a way of life coming to an end, a coming of age, and the quality of relationships.

And returning to the generic music score I criticised earlier, from the preview I have identified (some of) it as sounding very similar to the opening to Fargo! What is this piece of music?

This movie has all the ingredients to make a great movie. It is beautifully photographed with wonderful western landscapes. It has one of Woody Harrelson's best performances as a hard drinking, hard working, hard loving good old boy rancher. It has excellent support from Sam Elliot, Billy Crudup and Penelope Cruz. It is set in the late 40's, early 50's when small independent ranchers are being replaced by large commercial farms.

The problem with this movie is that is focuses way too much on the three way relationship between Billy Crudup, Woody Harrelson and Patricia Arquette. Arquette and Harrelson are lovers and Crudup lusts after Arquette. This relationship is not believable because Arquette's character is untrustworthy, amoral, and a liar. The woman who is more interested in Crudup is the Penelope Cruz character. The movie never explains why Crudup would prefer Arquette over the much more beautiful and sexy Cruz.

The Sam Elliot character is wasted. He does a good job of portraying the businessman rancher. He is not evil, but all the small time ranchers hate him because he is contributing to, and a symbol of, the end of small ranches. But it is not Sam Elliot that is destroying the small ranches, it is the progress of commercialization which Sam Elliot represents. It is this contradiction between good person Sam Elliot is and the evil that he represents that makes is character so interesting. This movie should have been more about Sam Elliot.

The movie falls apart into silly soap opera / action movie like scenes at the end. It abandons the interesting character study and gives us emergency rescues in a storm, deaths, murders, cover-ups and "dramatic" revelations. Those scenes belong in some other movie.

A very good film, haunting, moving and intimate. Excellent cinematography and acting take us into the beautiful open skies of 1940's rural New Mexico, as the cowboy world begins to fade away. More a period piece than a Western, this is an intimate look (interestingly, by a British director) at the relationship between two guys, and the women, family and rivals in their lives. It's a coming of age picture, although Crudup is in his early twenties (and Harrelson plays late twenties/early thirties).

Crudup and Harrelson both look great and deliver strong performances. It's a man's world in this picture, and Arquette has a lesser role. Macho guys who like traditional Westerns won't enjoy this picture; "sensitive" guys will. I was reminded of Going All the Way (also from Gramercy), a coming of age film set in small town 1950s.

Some criticisms - the narration's a bit overdone in places; unbelievably, the characters go off to war and return essentially unchanged; and the ending is in some ways unsatisfying. But see it anyway. It's another fine film from Gramercy & Polygram, companies with taste whose fates are unfortunately cloudy now that they are being absorbed by Universal.