In your typical crime thriller, activism isn’t high on the list of focal plot points. Right off the bat, that’s what makes Robert Duvall’s latest western, Wild Horses, stand out from the mass of films following relatively similar stories. Writer/director/lead Duvall sets out to show just how hard life can be for someone who can’t adapt to modern thinking and how immensely difficult that can make things for those closest to him, especially when they’re the cause of his rage and confusion.
Scott Briggs (Duvall) is a 70-something rancher stuck in his ways. Fifteen years ago he kicked his son Ben (James Franco) off his property for being gay, but he’s asked him to come back into town so the family can go over his will and try to reconnect. Complicating this reunion is the fact that a Texas ranger, Samantha Payne...
Scott Briggs (Duvall) is a 70-something rancher stuck in his ways. Fifteen years ago he kicked his son Ben (James Franco) off his property for being gay, but he’s asked him to come back into town so the family can go over his will and try to reconnect. Complicating this reunion is the fact that a Texas ranger, Samantha Payne...
- 3/31/2015
- by Alexander Lowe
- We Got This Covered
There's a twinge of activism amid the threads of Robert Duvall's latest directorial effort Wild Horses. Although a traditional crime story, Duvall slightly subverts this simple approach, casting himself as a man confronted with a lifestyle he doesn't quite understand, exploring an ideological message rather unexpected for a film like this. It's an interesting choice and potentially effective one. Unfortunately, it's packaged in a middling, mediocre framework that's inert almost from the word "go". The film opens with Scott Briggs (Duvall), a ranch owner, finding his son, Ben (James Franco), fooling around with another man in their barn. He ultimately chases the kid off and we flash forward fifteen years to learn the young man Briggs chased off that night actually disappeared. The police never found a body or a suspect. Now, Samantha Payne (Luciana Duvall), a Texas ranger, has decided to reopen the case. She suspects the missing...
- 3/22/2015
- by Mike Shutt
- Rope of Silicon
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