Producers: James Lassiter, Lawrence Bender, Jeymes Samuel and Shawn Carter Director: Jeymes Samuel Screenplay: Jeymes Samuel and Boaz Yakin Cast: Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, RJ Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr. and Deon Cole Distributor: Netflix
Grade: B
The spirit of Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino pervades Jeymes Samuel’s flamboyantly overripe western, which goes to preposterous lengths but remains watchable due to its florid style and strong ensemble cast. It plays fast and loose with history—many of the characters actually existed, but the events depicted never happened (indeed, most never even met)—but then how many of the stories told on screen and television about Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James or Bad Masterson, to name but a few, actually occurred? The important thing is that “The Harder They Fall” is fun—bloody and violent fun, to be sure, but still fun.
The movie is a revenge story of the sort so common to the genre, but an especially convoluted example of the genre. It begins in the home of a preacher named Love, who’s sitting down for dinner with his wife and young son Nat (Anthony Naylor Jr.), when a mysterious gunslinger later identified as Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) intrudes, savagely killing the parents but only scarring the boy on his forehead.
Jump ahead a couple of decades and Nat (Jonathan Majors) is now a notorious outlaw, known however not for robbing banks but, together with his partners Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and Jim Beckwourth (EJ Cyler), robbing bank robbers. He’s also an avenging angel, killing the man who’d accompanied Buck years earlier. Buck himself in in prison and out of reach, but the Love Gang’s latest job involved stealing the loot from Buck’s outfit, leaving only one member of the crew, Monroe Grimes (Damon Wayans Jr.) alive to tell the tale.
Meanwhile, though, Buck has been sprung, very violently, from a train transporting him from prison by members of his gang, including Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield) and Trudy Smith (Regina King)—although we’re told he’s already been pardoned. In any event, he returns to his stronghold of Redwood City, brutally evicts Wiley Escoe (Deon Cole), the disloyal aide he’d left to control it in his absence, and takes over again.
Meanwhile Nat has travelled to the town where Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz), his erstwhile lover and partner, runs a saloon, and reconnects with her. There he’s arrested by hard-bitten Marshall Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), who actually intend to recruit him in a campaign against Buck. They’re quickly joined in their quest by Pickett, Beckwourth, and, unsurprisingly, Mary, along with Cuffee Williams (Danielle Deadwyler), the tough little enforcer at Mary’s saloon.
What follows is a standoff between Buck’s much larger gang and Nat’s crew when Buck takes Mary prisoner and demands the return of his money—along with an “interest” payment—in return for her release. The end result is a massive confrontation complete with explosions, shoot-outs and piles of corpses, as well as a prolonged one-on-one between Tracy and Mary and a face-off between Nat and Buck that hearkens back to the opening massacre in a way that might remind you of the big surprise in “The Empire Strikes Back.” And one can’t overlook the beatings, bank robberies, gunfights, and torture episodes that are strewn along the way.
The cast is diverse in terms of gender, but all the major characters are African-American—there are some Caucasians in the cast, but they’re peripheral, and either frightened or doomed. Majors and Elba are a great pair of antagonists in the Leone mold, while King and Beetz are no less impressive on the distaff side. Another pairing pits Stanfield against Cyler as quick-draw artists on opposite sides, with the cocky Beckwourth anxious to prove he’s faster than the calculating Bill. For grizzled gravitas one could hardly improve on Lindo, while Gathegi and newcomer Deadwyler meet the challenge of holding their own in such a cast.
Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare brings a sense of grandeur to the lustrous widescreen images, making full use not only of the striking locations but of Martin Whist’s excellent production design and Antoinette Messam’s costumes. It’s undoubtedly Samuel’s decisions that controlled Tom Eagles’ editing, but one might still take issue with the frequent employment of slow-motion and the protracted character of some sequences, especially in the final act: the battle between Tracy and Mary seems to go on forever (and, as the last shot indicates, ended inconclusively), and the final confrontation over the fate of Redwood City even longer; the intercutting between them, and the myriad twists in the latter, help but not quite enough. On the other hand, other sequences—like the railroad freeing of Buck—are exceptionally well calibrated. Samuel’s score is suitably sweeping, and the songs used as transitional devices (the music supervision is by Michelle Silverman) work nicely, adding to the contemporary edge in the dialogue. A little anachronism is to be expected in this sort of fare.
There’s a lot of imitation—or, if you prefer, homage—going on in “The Harder They Fall”—and the execution is sometimes flawed. But overall it makes for a bloody good time, if a long one.