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Old Henry
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| Year: |
2021
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Director: |
Potsy Ponciroli
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| Stars: |
Tim Blake Nelson, Scott Haze, Gavin Lewis, Stephen Dorff, Max Arciniega, Brad Carter, Kent Shelton, Richard Speight Jr
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| Genre: |
Western |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Ketchum (Stephen Dorff) claims to be a Sheriff, and he is in pursuit of a man who has stolen a large amount of cash from him, so in that pursuit he has tracked one of the man's associates and makes no bones about shooting him and torturing him to find out where the real object of his obsession has gone. When he gets the vaguest idea, he proceeds to choke the associate and hang him from a tree, little knowing this latest lead will take him on a collision course with Old Henry (Tim Blake Nelson), a middle-aged widower who has a farm some miles from there. He lives in a modest house with his son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis), who he has forbidden from so much as picking up a gun - but he may have to change his mind.
Old Henry won some measure of praise when it was released, as a Western strictly of the old school, the sort of thing the critics could imagine their fathers and grandfathers going to see as boys, though in effect it was somewhat more violent than the traditional oaters of the golden age, or at least more bloody once the bullets started to fly (the claret tended to flow later, once into the late nineteen-sixties and seventies). In that manner, writer and director Potsy Poncrioli was hedging his bets by adding revisionist Western techniques into the mix as well, though the latterly appearing twist, or revelation, at least, was like something out of a pulp paperback, with a heavy dose of the Old West equivalent of the urban myth.
Before they got to that stage, there was some setting up of plot to get through, basically so we could get stuff established for the big shootout at the finale (not a spoiler, you could see this coming a mile off). This unfortunately meant a shade too much exposition as the film too often grew bogged down in talk, most of it through gritted teeth, as the fugitive, Curry (Scott Haze) is discovered by Henry in a nearby field with the bag of money and is taken back to the farmhouse to recuperate. Quite why Henry decides to get involved is a little bit of a mystery - are we meant to believe he does it out of the goodness of his own heart? - but regardless of plot reservations, that is what he does, and soon Curry is recovering from his gunshot wound but frankly, not behaving as if he is particularly grateful for the older man's rescue of him.
He thinks Henry is after the cash, but the film's strongest suit is not the conversations between Henry and Curry, or Henry and his son, for that matter, but between our ageing hero and Ketchum as the two old pros Nelson and Dorff squaring off against one another offer some value for your time and attention. The scene where they first meet, Henry on his porch and Ketchum on horseback, flanked by his ruthless heavies, is legitimately tense, and you can tell the actors are relishing ramping up the suspense for the audience over who will shoot first. As it turns out, there's what might be described as a stay of execution for them both, but really this is to build anticipation for the big showdown come the conclusion of the movie. The business with Nelson and the other two main characters was somewhat hackneyed, and you could argue it was with Dorff as well, but every good Western needs its morality play, and those two raised this a notch above many a straight to streaming effort with which it might have been more comfortably compared. But the big reveal was a bit silly. Music by Jordan Lehning.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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