Friday, January 26, 2007

Movie review: Seraphim Falls

New western bites snow - then dust

By John P. Meyer

Gadabout TV director David Von Ancken (Without a Trace, The Shield, Cold Case, CSI: NY) delivers up his first theatrical feature in the guise of a classical western vengeance tale, Seraphim Falls. At least, that's how it starts out.

Seraphim Falls

The Civil War has ended, but Colonel Morsman Carver is on one final mission: to kill Gideon no matter what it takes. Launched by a gunshot and propelled by rage, the relentless pursuit takes them both far from the comforts and codes of civilization, into the bloodiest recesses of their own souls.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Seraphim Falls

With a nod to any number of atmospheric posse flicks that base their action in the high western mountains during snowbound winter - think Jeremiah Johnson, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Will Penny and even The Great Silence, for those of you with a predilection for spaghetti westerns - Seraphim places loner Gideon (Pierce Brosnan, looking weather-beaten and desperate, as befits the role) at the mercy of a guy with a grudge named Carver (Liam Neeson) and his small (and about to be smaller) band of hired guns.

Carver and crew ambush Gideon, shooting him from concealment as he's preparing to bite into his succulent campfire rotisserie rabbit. Bad form, blokes! Well, at least they don't let the rabbit go to waste, picking its bones clean while the wounded Gideon plunges off into the frozen wilderness. "Let 'im bleed," sneers Neeson, gnawing a tiny drumstick.

Thus Gideon begins a tortured (and torturous) quest to escape both his pursuers and his past. Seems he served as a Union captain during and after the recent Civil War, and one of his final acts as a man-at-arms involved some ill-fated flushing-out tactics undertaken at the homestead tenanted by his current pursuer, Carver. This experience (along others we learn about over the course of events) has left him wandering the west alone - a pariah in his own mind and thus in fact.

I thought YOU brought the popcorn!

An intense initial pursuit through the bone-numbing cold of snow-clad mountain heights allows Brosnan to exercise the panoply of animal-in-misery noises (groaning, huffing, moaning) he's had to internalize while playing suave, fearless secret agents all these years. In fact, he utters not a word of intelligible dialogue for the first half hour or so of the film, during which he has a lot of screen time. These early sequences play out as a gory cinematic ode to the extremities to which an individual will go in order to continue living - I'll not spoil any surprises for you, but prepare to either turn away in disgust or scrutinize the special effect blood-and-guts for verisimilitude.

After Gideon's third or fourth improbable escape from his increasingly less enthusiastic pursuers, things start to go downhill: literally, with the action shifting from high mountain vastnesses (filmed in Oregon and the Santa Fe National Forest of New Mexico, and providing a splendid alpine example for those who think our neighbor state is a desert wasteland) to low arid vastnesses (also filmed in New Mexico. D'OH!). Meanwhile, the gruesome bloodletting continues until it begins to take on a quality of parody.

As a maven of the hardware, I can report that the firearms in evidence are accurate to period, with the sidearms resembling a variety of cartridge conversion revolvers commonly encountered on the frontier in the post-Civil War era and the long guns confined to Henrys and black powder scatterguns.

Things start to devolve into metaphysics, typically a bad sign for a western. A guru-like waterhole guardian (Wes Studhi, in a throwaway role) demands various specialized forms of payment from those who slake their thirsts at his font; Anjelica Huston (also wasted - they could have gotten Adrienne Barbeau for so much less!) shows up in the middle of a sand-blasted playa peddling either snake oil, guns or bullets, depending upon one's particular need.

What the whole too-long mess ends up being is a cumbersome allegory about the unwieldy extravagance of revenge, and how those who pursue it end up spending all they own (both physically and spiritually) to achieve their goals. Man, they could have just told us this in an end-reel text credit half an hour earlier, rather than subjecting us to this El Topo-meets-High Plains Drifter pseudo-intellectual horse manure.

Not to say that there aren't some beautiful scenics in the movie, but as one of the few westerns to come along in the last several years, it's sad that my final take on it has to be: watch where you step.

FROM THE "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" FILES:

"What you want?" - shot-and-bleeding Gideon to his relentless pursuer, Carver

"I'd a thought that was obvious, seein' as how I've been shooting at you." - Carver to Gideon

SLIPPING INTO THE TWILIGHT ZONE:

"Certain kinda decision - once a man makes it, he can't end up nowhere else." - Carver to hired gun

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Comments

Mike Orren Staff

We at Pegasus News would like to offer a hearty welcome to John's wife and debtors.

;-)

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

John Meyer Staff

Oy Vey!

1 year, 5 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )