A Netflix viewing on January 11, 2019 in Chicago. Since this film is written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, it needed to be viewed. Now the title and the trailer can be a little misleading. This is an anthology film with six different stories about the American West.
The stories are very different. The opening segment, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is kind of an homage to the singing cowboy films of the 30's. It's the best of the six. It has the most humor and ridiculous violence.
The next segment, "Near Algodones," deals with a bank robbery gone bad and the series of ironic twists that the protagonist endures. The third segment, "Meal Ticket," deals with a man with a traveling show with the main attraction being a limbless man who theatrically recites bible stories, Shakespeare and the Gettysburg address. As they go from small town the small town, they collect less and less money and after a particular bad night, the caretaker buys a chicken that performs math tricks. The much lower overhead seals the fate of the young performer.
The fourth segment, "All Gold Canyon," deals with a grizzled prospector finding a river in a beautiful valley and searching for gold. You see him go through the process of deciphering where the gold vein can be and overcoming a potential thief. Segment five, "The Gal Who Got Rattled," is about a brother and sister's journey to Oregon that is beset by a series of unfortunate events. The brother dies just after the depart and he's buried with all the money they have. One of the wagon train's leaders, Billy Knapp, takes pity on poor Alice and offers to help her. But Alice breaks away from the wagon train and is found by the wagon train leader, Mr Arthur. As they begin to make their way back to the wagon train, they're spotted by a war party. The final segment, "The Mortal Remains," is about a group traveling by stagecoach. They swap stories, giving a little bit of exposition about each other. It gets a little weird but that's about it.
The film has a great cast with really strong performances all around. The cinematography is beautiful and the Coen Brothers do a nice job of recreating the time, for keeping things gritty and authentic as well, or as authentic as it could be. The opening segment is the best and each additional story drops off some from the previous. The film has a 133 minute runtime with each segment having it's own pacing and tension. Which made the final segment almost forgettable to me. It wasn't bad but five segments would have been better.
The film received a 91% Rotten Tomatoes rating and that seems a bit high to me. It's an interesting direction the Coen's took and is worth seeing if you're a follower of their work. The Coen's can tell a good story and the technical aspects are great but it just ran a bit long for me.
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