REVIEW
The Sisters Brothers
Stars: 4.0
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Ian Reddington, Richard Brake, Allison Tolman, Carol Kane, and Rutger Hauer
Written by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Rated 14A for brutal violence, nudity, brief sexual activity, and coarse language
Runtime: 121 minutes
Now, I’m not a cowboy and I don’t generally listen to country and western music. Don’t hold it against me.
That being said, I have been known to enjoy some decent western movies. “Decent” is a tall order, however. At the high mark are movies like Clint Eastwood’s unparalleled Unforgiven; at the low end are desperate disasters like last year’s Hostiles. Most westerns rank somewhere in the middle of those bookends.
The timing of the wide release of The Sisters Brothers couldn’t be more apt, and not just because it has made the rounds at a number of film festivals where it has been soundly appreciated. Jacques Audiard’s film is based on the novel of the same name by Patrick deWitt, who will be making his appearance at this year’s STARFest on Sunday, Oct. 21, promoting his new book French Exit. But enough of that here.
deWitt first gained wide acclaim with this story of the two brothers in Oregon and California who are hired hitmen. The year is 1851, putting our scene straight into the Gold Rush era. In the movie Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) are the brothers and they’re tough to get along with, especially with each other. They’re the “shoot first, shoot later” type who picked up a lot of their angered tendencies from their father who they talk of occasionally. They also picked up their drunkenness from him, too, which doesn’t help things except the story.
Their boss, the Commodore (Rutger Hauer), assigns them to track and assassinate a thief by the name of Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed). Warm has befriended a detective named John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) along his travels. In that friendship, it is revealed that Warm is actually a pretty clever chemist who has devised a much easier method to find and extract gold from a river. In learning this, the Sisters suddenly see a greater value in making him a partner rather than earning a measly reward for ending his life.
And thus, adventure ensues, along with gunplay, cussing, familial love/sibling rivalry, some dark humour, a touch of redemption with a ton of misfortune, and one of the best and most fun western stories that has come to the silver screen in a long time. I’ve always found Phoenix to be a highly watchable actor and Reilly is tone perfect in many roles he has taken. Together, they play their relationship with equal parts human drama and high comedy as if they were shuffling a two-step in some saloon. This movie is a delight. It’s the sort of film that easily warrants a repeat viewing in the theatre.
