PLOT: Gunslinger Nat Love brings his crew back together to go against the gang of rival Rufus Buck in a tale of revenge in the Old West.
REVIEW: Director Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall kicks down the door blasting a six-shooter, its opening sequence setting the tone for a western that has blood and style on its mind. That scene leads into opening credits showing off the impressive ensemble cast to come, fit with a slick Jay-Z track to make it pop. In short, it wastes no time embracing Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation roots and letting you know it’s not here to f**k around for a moment.
Making up this sleek western are depictions of real Black outlaw figures, with the film’s opening words reading “While the events of this story are fictional…These. People. Existed.” As a way of mythologizing the actions of these real people, the story written by Samuel and Boaz Yakin assembles them together like a Wild West superhero team, centered on Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) and his tale of revenge against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). After murdering the young Love’s mom and dad, Buck carved a cross on a young Love’s forehead, working as a sort of badge of honor for him years later. Now a deadly outlaw himself, Love is reassembling his crew – Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz), Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), and Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) – to take on Rufus and his gang – including Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield).
To get the good out of the way before the bad and possibly the ugly, this simple premise with such a fantastic cast means much of the inflated runtime is incredibly fun. Samuel treats this outlaw country as a playground and has a distinct eye when it comes to framing his larger-than-life characters. Sequences like the first time we meet Beckwourth and Pickett as they take down a hooded gang in a canyon, or when Buck’s gang busts him out of a cell on a train, come alive thanks to the dynamic interplay between the cast, cool shots, and no shortage of blood.
Even though the rule of movies sent to Netflix seems to be that most of them can’t look too interesting as to turn away viewers trying to watch on their phones, the production design makes up for where the rest of the movie fails to impress visually. Production design by Martin Whist and art direction by Matthew Gatlin and Gregory S. Hooper feels designed to give viewers a different perspective on the West than what we’ve seen in the well-worn genre. The town of Redwood – a town of predominantly Black citizens – is bursting with color and music, and Samuels lets the camera absorb that space with the cast smack dab in the middle. This approach is even used to a bit of comedic effect with the “White” town of Maysville looking like a typical Old West town if it had been dumped on by a massive salt truck. With Samuels and producer Jay-Z on the music, a strong score busting with a blend of reggae, funk, classic orchestrations, and more adds yet another important ingredient that goes towards Harder They Fall leaving its mark on the genre.
But such is the case with a lot of movies that have style and vision to spare, a lot of what’s underneath that flair is about as unexciting as any other by-the-numbers flick in the genre. While Samuel certainly knows how he wanted his movie to look and feel, whatever story to tell just as certainly doesn’t have the bandwidth for its 140-minute runtime. The revenge story hinges primarily on Love and Buck, and considering most of the runtime is spent with the two of them away from each other as they plot and plan, there’s not much in terms of stakes being built up or drama being explored. When the bullets aren’t flying the movie goes along with this big cast of characters just sort of killing time, with the dialogue doing little to really explore them beyond the events at hand, where even the admittedly entertaining scene in Maysville feels there to pad out the runtime and add in some more action.
While there’s nothing wrong with these characters simply existing in this space and bouncing off each others’ personalities, especially when the genre on the whole routinely doesn’t feature casts that look like this, that doesn’t mean anything they’re doing is exactly interesting. In trying to capture personalities on the page that pay homage to the people they were in real life, nothing is being done to make most of the cast feel like they have a place in the overall narrative other than to just be there. Stanfield’s character, for one, has some good scenes at the top and a bit at the end, but for everything in between, he feels more like a presence and less like a character. As a result, while Samuel clearly has reverence for these real-life figures, there’s not much reason to care about most of them in the context of his movie.
Much of that is felt in the final climax, which doesn’t take a psychic to figure out involves a shootout where people you have come to admire may bite the bullet. When several characters do meet their end, moments that are perhaps meant to be met with shock or some dramatic heft have none. This showdown, as a whole, plays out with kinetic action and camerawork, but is still emotionally hollow, abandoning character development for kills.
As all of this goes along, I started to ask myself the question of what story was exactly trying to be told. I settled on the tried-and-true formula of the cyclical nature of revenge, but again, that really only applies to Love and Buck, and only in the thinnest of approaches. When the final showdown arrives, a story element comes into play that is maybe meant to act as a sort of twist but is ultimately far too little too late in trying to make a story about how violence is repeated over and over have any weight.
Luckily, even though the story and writing are stretched far too thin, the cast is excellent enough to make at least going through this journey a worthwhile ride. Majors once again proves why is a tried and true movie star, effortlessly harnessing the commanding presence of Nat as a leader, and one who doesn’t need to fit neatly in the box of “good” or “bad” in order for you to care about him at that. Elba is reliably engaging as the hard and mostly stoic Buck, who can be menacing with a glare that says he will kill you, but only when you least expect it. The same applies to King as Buck’s loyal right-hand Trudy, with her getting to dig into some low-key viciousness. Stanfield too tries to bring some quiet intensity to Bill, even though the role doesn’t quite allow him to match Elba and King in their gang. Beetz brings an appropriate tough exterior and edge to Mary, but even now I’m not quite sure if I was convinced by those moments as opposed to when she gets to inject some slick charm. Rounding out Love’s gang are Cyler and Gathegi with a fun back and forth, and Deadwyler and Lindo who, despite a good scene or two, mostly feel lost in the background.
In trying to bring an all-black cast to a tired genre with a history defined by stars like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, Samuel succeeds in crafting an entertaining western with the right amount of style, energy, and blood to give it its own identity. It’s everything outside of that, such as character development and story, that stop it from being a real tour-de-force that has something to say to go along with all that flair. While there’s nothing wrong with bringing just the basics to the table and making them your own, that doesn’t work when your pushing close to a 2.5-hour runtime, making The Harder They Fall’s ride into the sunset far less triumphant than it could’ve been.