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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated The Sisters Brothers (2018) in Movies
Jan 7, 2019 (Updated Jan 7, 2019)
Cast all give brilliant performances (1 more)
Quirky filming techniques
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
I was dying to see this movie as soon as I saw the first trailer for it, but even though it dropped in the states months ago, it's not coming to UK cinemas until April 2019! However, if you mess around with the location settings on your on-demand website of choice, it is possible to legally watch this movie in Britain without having to wait another 4 months for it to release.
We seem to be at a point cinematically where traditional westerns that follow a gunslinger duelling his way across the west have all been done to death. Instead, it seems like modern westerns have to take a different, more unorthodox approach to the stories that they decide to tell. Take The Hateful Eight for example, as much as I loved that film, it was closer to the Clue movie than it was any of Sergio Leonne's Spaghetti Westerns. Or there is the very recent Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, which I personally enjoyed, but even within that movie, the tone and feel varied wildly throughout and none of it was what I would call a traditional western.
The Sisters Brothers follows this trajectory of oddity. It follows the titular brothers (played by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Pheonix,) who are essentially hitmen working for a Commodore (played by Rutger Hauer,) who have been sent to kill a chemist/gold prospector (played by Riz Ahmed,) with the help of a scout also working for the commodore, (played by Jake Gyllenhall.)
This movie is strange. It was directed by Jacques Audiard and there is a strange tone to the whole thing which feels distinctly French. There are an abundance of odd yet aesthetically pleasing shots that contribute to the film's odd tone and there are some comedic elements thrown in also. The whole thing is a mixing pot of different elements, yet it all strangely works.
Overall, I enjoyed The Sisters Brothers even if it was unconventional and not exactly the movie that I had expected going in and the performances all around are sublime.
We seem to be at a point cinematically where traditional westerns that follow a gunslinger duelling his way across the west have all been done to death. Instead, it seems like modern westerns have to take a different, more unorthodox approach to the stories that they decide to tell. Take The Hateful Eight for example, as much as I loved that film, it was closer to the Clue movie than it was any of Sergio Leonne's Spaghetti Westerns. Or there is the very recent Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, which I personally enjoyed, but even within that movie, the tone and feel varied wildly throughout and none of it was what I would call a traditional western.
The Sisters Brothers follows this trajectory of oddity. It follows the titular brothers (played by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Pheonix,) who are essentially hitmen working for a Commodore (played by Rutger Hauer,) who have been sent to kill a chemist/gold prospector (played by Riz Ahmed,) with the help of a scout also working for the commodore, (played by Jake Gyllenhall.)
This movie is strange. It was directed by Jacques Audiard and there is a strange tone to the whole thing which feels distinctly French. There are an abundance of odd yet aesthetically pleasing shots that contribute to the film's odd tone and there are some comedic elements thrown in also. The whole thing is a mixing pot of different elements, yet it all strangely works.
Overall, I enjoyed The Sisters Brothers even if it was unconventional and not exactly the movie that I had expected going in and the performances all around are sublime.