Miss Good Old Westerns? This New Gem with GoT Star Is as Old-Fashioned as It Is Brilliant
Fans of the genre simply cannot afford to miss it.
Based on the novel of the same name by Joe R. Lansdale, director Elliott Lester's Western The Thicket is not exactly unique, and it doesn't shy away from it. The plot, in which a group of outcasts hunt down bandits who wreak havoc for hard cash, has long been a staple of movies about the troubled frontier.
But Lester works the over-plowed field with the expertise and skill of Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, and John Ford. The charm of The Thicket lies not in the novelty of the story, but in the visual feast and the development of the characters.
What Is The Thicket About?
Early 20th century. Lula and Jack, a brother and sister whose parents died of smallpox, set out for Montana with their grandfather. At the crossing, the travelers encounter a gang led by the notorious Cut Throat Bill.
Only Bill turns out to be a woman with a nasty character and unhealthy habits. She kills the grandfather, kidnaps Lula and leaves Jack to die in the snow.
But the man does not want to give up, he goes to the next town and hires a gravedigger, Reginald Jones, who is also one of the best marksmen in the Wild West, as a bounty hunter.
The Thicket Has a Brilliant Cast & Strong Performances
It is worth mentioning the amazing performance of Juliette Lewis, who turns her character, Bill, into a real Frankenstein's monster of childhood traumas, addictions, suppressed rage and quite obvious madness.
On the way with Lula to a certain mystical thicket from which, according to the gang members, none of the prisoners has returned, the criminal becomes attached to the girl and protects her from the encroachments of the accomplices.
On the other side of the scale is Peter Dinklage's character, who, for obvious reasons, has been forced to face the injustice of the harsh world since birth. Jones has no home, no relatives, and his only friend is the former slave Eustace.
The Thicket Is an Old-Fashioned Western in the Best Sense of the Word
The Thicket will not surprise the audience with new sensations or with the originality of the author's optics. On the contrary, among modern revisionist Westerns, Elliott Lester's thriller is perhaps the most old-fashioned in almost every respect.
But in the age of metamodernism, when the pure genre seems to be dying out, this approach becomes decisive: sometimes, in order to see important things, it is worth cutting away everything unnecessary, leaving only bare nerves.