If
you are wearing chaps and spurs, you’re probably prepared for a tale of how the
West was completely inappropriate. Leering George Tildon regularly enjoys pervy
rub-downs from his fifteen-year-old daughter Florence, because that is the “frontier
way.” Of course, he is also a preacher. Why pass up the opportunity for a cheap
shot like that? Rather understandably, the Lolita-esque Florence’s loyalties
will be divided when a gang of sweaty bank-robbers invade their home in JT
Mollner’s Outlaws and Angels (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
Henry
the ringleader is one cool customer, but the gang’s latest bank job does not
exactly go down with tick-tock precision. They make away with the cash, but
they leave behind two dead gang-member on the trail. Having killed a lawman and
a “popular” woman around town, they are guaranteed to have the posse out for
their scalps, but nobody will be more dogged than bounty hunter Josiah. He
travels so light, he doesn’t even carry a surname. Josiah is even hardnosed enough
to follow them into a punishingly arid stretch of land only the antisocial
Tildons would be masochistic enough to live on.
Poor
Flo is creeped out by her father, relentlessly bullied by her grown sister Charlotte,
and generally put-off by her mother’s hypocritical uber-piety. When Henry, the
dumb one, and the psycho-sadistic one take her family hostage, it represents a
significant improvement in her life, even though things immediately get rapey. O and A probably spends more time
threatening sexual assault than any other film you will see this year.
Fortunately, there is an immediate mutual attraction shared by Florence and
Henry, whose word supersedes the rest of the gang.
Gosh,
this is an unpleasant film. Frankly, it is hard to imagine what Mollner envisioned
to be the fun parts. That is a shame, because the film wastes a sinisterly
charismatic against-type performance from Chad Michael Murray as Henry. He is
one bad cat, but the rest of the gang are paint-by-numbers stock characters. Owen
Wilson also stretches his range a bit as the ethically elastic Josiah, with
generally positive results. If Ben Browder is deliberately going with cringes as
old man Tildon than he succeeds swimmingly. However, Francesca Eastwood (yes,
those Eastwoods) always looks like she is trying to double Amanda Seyfried.
Even though Mollner unsubtly stacks the deck against the Tildons, she never convincingly
sells Florence’s betrayals.
