Post by Doomsday on Nov 9, 2021 16:23:39 GMT -5
Old Henry
I didn't see any mention of this movie on these boards, in fact I hadn't heard of this movie at all until someone randomly mentioned it to me one day but I'm always a sucker for a competent looking western. Written and directed by someone named Potsy Ponciroli and starring Tim Blake Nelson as the titular character, Old Henry is a movie that feels comfortably familiar at times but also struggles while trying to up its game at others. It's a movie that makes a lot of the right moves but stumbles while trying to break out of its shell. It doesn't make for a fantastic movie but it does what it needs to do.
Old Henry has a simple, almost too simple premise; farmer Henry and his son Wyatt live the quaint life on a farm in the middle of nowhere. One day Henry finds a wounded man close to death along with a satchel of money. Against his better judgement he brings the man home and tries to nurse him back to health. Before long though a group of ne'er do wells track down Henry at his farm house and demand that Henry turn over the man and the money. Just as things start to get violent however we learn there's 'more to Old Henry than meets the eye' and that he's just as skilled with a pistol as he is with a plow.
Now I'm all for conventional filmmaking and storytelling. Not every movie needs to break the mold and sometimes there are movies, especially westerns, that flourish while relegating themselves to the standard formula. Think Open Range or Tombstone. Old Henry tries to do the same in that it attempts to work its own story successfully into the traditional western setup but it also tries to establish a twist pretty early on that I'm sure sounded good on paper but when executed feels like it's trying way too hard. Based on the trailer and my short synopsis alone you know that Henry is a man with a hard, perhaps even sinister backstory which is fine, it's not an uncommon theme.
By far the bright spot of the film is Tim Blake Nelson who plays a subdued but serious role and it's always fun watching someone who isn't the physical stereotype of action star kick some ass. He's quite great here and watching this movie made me look back on the films of his that I've watched while overlooking his role or taking his acting chops for granted. Unfortunately his good turn is evened out by the role of his son Wyatt. I don't blame the actor for this because he's doing what the script is telling him to do but Old Henry is yet another film that has one of my most hated tropes in filmdom; the prick kid who exists to ruin everything. Henry's son is ripped straight out of The Patriot, 3:10 to Yuma, War of the Worlds and every other movie where the kid of the main character makes life infinitely harder, he's almost worse than the antagonist. He's an idiot and the way he's portrayed really brings the film down when he's on screen. He exists solely to create conflict which feels like a screenwriting cheat.
I just noticed how much I typed for a movie that might not even deserve it. Not because it's bad, it's just a fun albeit imperfect escape. It's a completely serviceable western with a lot of good scenes and on the whole there are more successful elements that help smooth out the weaker points. I can see people enjoying it as a straight-forward western film and people writing it off for not attempting to do more with its premise but at the end of the day if you're looking for a new jaunt into the great American genre then this is a worthy way to do it.
B so says Doomsday
I didn't see any mention of this movie on these boards, in fact I hadn't heard of this movie at all until someone randomly mentioned it to me one day but I'm always a sucker for a competent looking western. Written and directed by someone named Potsy Ponciroli and starring Tim Blake Nelson as the titular character, Old Henry is a movie that feels comfortably familiar at times but also struggles while trying to up its game at others. It's a movie that makes a lot of the right moves but stumbles while trying to break out of its shell. It doesn't make for a fantastic movie but it does what it needs to do.
Old Henry has a simple, almost too simple premise; farmer Henry and his son Wyatt live the quaint life on a farm in the middle of nowhere. One day Henry finds a wounded man close to death along with a satchel of money. Against his better judgement he brings the man home and tries to nurse him back to health. Before long though a group of ne'er do wells track down Henry at his farm house and demand that Henry turn over the man and the money. Just as things start to get violent however we learn there's 'more to Old Henry than meets the eye' and that he's just as skilled with a pistol as he is with a plow.
Now I'm all for conventional filmmaking and storytelling. Not every movie needs to break the mold and sometimes there are movies, especially westerns, that flourish while relegating themselves to the standard formula. Think Open Range or Tombstone. Old Henry tries to do the same in that it attempts to work its own story successfully into the traditional western setup but it also tries to establish a twist pretty early on that I'm sure sounded good on paper but when executed feels like it's trying way too hard. Based on the trailer and my short synopsis alone you know that Henry is a man with a hard, perhaps even sinister backstory which is fine, it's not an uncommon theme.
Making him Billy the Kid
however feels like it's trying to bite off more than it can chew. It makes it feel more out of place than anything which is disappointing because it feels like something that Ponciroli thought was a brilliant idea when writing it. By far the bright spot of the film is Tim Blake Nelson who plays a subdued but serious role and it's always fun watching someone who isn't the physical stereotype of action star kick some ass. He's quite great here and watching this movie made me look back on the films of his that I've watched while overlooking his role or taking his acting chops for granted. Unfortunately his good turn is evened out by the role of his son Wyatt. I don't blame the actor for this because he's doing what the script is telling him to do but Old Henry is yet another film that has one of my most hated tropes in filmdom; the prick kid who exists to ruin everything. Henry's son is ripped straight out of The Patriot, 3:10 to Yuma, War of the Worlds and every other movie where the kid of the main character makes life infinitely harder, he's almost worse than the antagonist. He's an idiot and the way he's portrayed really brings the film down when he's on screen. He exists solely to create conflict which feels like a screenwriting cheat.
I just noticed how much I typed for a movie that might not even deserve it. Not because it's bad, it's just a fun albeit imperfect escape. It's a completely serviceable western with a lot of good scenes and on the whole there are more successful elements that help smooth out the weaker points. I can see people enjoying it as a straight-forward western film and people writing it off for not attempting to do more with its premise but at the end of the day if you're looking for a new jaunt into the great American genre then this is a worthy way to do it.
B so says Doomsday
