cowboys and indians

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2007)

As an action-adventure Western this is competent enough to permit enjoyment. It overuses much-used cinematic vocabulary to situate us in a fairly structured and very familiar world, but it comes at a cost. Into this world of ready made notions and symbols it pours the ingredients of a transformational psychological drama and leaves it to the characters to work or not.
Unfortunately for me, the characters are ideas rather than personalities. Rusty Crowe;s character is more god or mystagogue than human (he plays this role very well, I must add). He plays the manufacturer of myths, which is great, but he is also the model, which is not. The specific notion of manhood that he defines is adolescent, idealised, and unlivable. He is the fulfilled wish of a 14yo boy with an ordinary dad who lacks an heroic myth to insulate his identity, not someone who bleeds real blood.
For a psychological drama that requires a solution of a moral conflict to succeed, I think, it needs real human emotion rather than a language, visual or otherwise, that represents emotion. How do you achieve real human emotion in a movie? An Ariadne thread that provides a connection to reality no matter how deep into the labyrinth of illusion they tread. The "Western" is so stylised by now that to aspire to this reality of emotions with a straight bat seems misguided. Ironies, folds, and other quirky calculations are surely needed to communicate to the audience the nature of this problem and a reasonable resolution. This didn't have enough awareness of itself.
It is up to you to decide whether the resolution you observed was acceptable. But if you do accept it, you;re not pushing hard enough on the skin of your mind.