The Harder They Fall

Real-life characters from the Old West are resurrected in a fictitious story of revenge and bloodshed.

The Harder They Fall is one cool Western. And doesn’t its director know it. A singer-songwriter and music producer, Jeymes Samuel has made a habit of making his own music promos and his first full-length feature looks, feels and sounds like an extended music video. With songs provided by the likes of Kid Cudi and Jay-Z, CeeLo Green, Lauryn Hill, Koffee, Laura Mvula and the director’s own brother, Seal, the film could not feel more modern. Indeed, whilst set in Texas in the 1800s, the houses, streets and clothes look grand spanking new, which they would have been. A little more problematic is that the characters speak like they’ve just wandered out of Los Angeles, although the dialogue is a mix’n’match affair. Regina King plays the no-nonsense and deadly Treacherous Trudy and when Zazie Beetz' Stagecoach Mary rides into town with her rifle cocked, Trudy reaches out her hand and demands: “Give me that shit” – and takes Mary’s firearm. In the same scene, when Trudy interrupts Mary, the latter snaps: “Allow me the latitude of completion!”

Basically, Jeymes Samuel is having a whole lotta fun, stretching credibility here, borrowing a riff from Sergio Leone there and sticking his camera where he feels like it, largely for what feels like effect. However, he has surrounded himself with a vivid, illustrious cast and has allowed his actors to do their shtick with unalloyed deference to the clichés of the genre. There isn’t a single believable human being in the mix, but then this is like an animated graphic novel – with the accent on the graphic.

Following the shocking prologue, the film cuts to a white crucifix on a black background that segues into the ‘t’ in ‘Salinas, †exas’. If one is content to let the style overwhelm the content, The Harder They Fall is an enjoyable enough ride. Idris Elba casts charismatic doom as the gunslinger Rufus Buck, while Lakeith Stanfield perfects a menacing stare as a legendary fast-shooter, Cherokee Bill. Our protagonist, though, is Jonathan Majors as the sympathetic Nat Love, an outlaw with a major score to settle. In fact, they’re all bad guys here, of one stripe or another, occupying a parallel universe in which the black populace lives in a colourful town called Redwood, with the houses as multi-coloured as those of Bristol (or Copenhagen). When Nat is coerced into robbing a bank in a white town, the denizens as well as their buildings are entirely white. As a filmmaker, Samuel has quite an eye and, at the age of 42, he has time to develop his own style without borrowing quite so much from Leone and Quentin Tarantino.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Lakeith Stanfield, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, Deon Cole, RJ Cyler, Regina King, Idris Elba, Damon Wayans Jr, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Woody McClain, DeWanda Wise, Chase W. Dillon, Mikey Dolan, Dylan Kenin, G. Mac Brown.

Dir Jeymes Samuel, Pro Lawrence Bender, Shawn Carter, James Lassiter and Jeymes Samuel, Screenplay Jeymes Samuel and Boaz Yakin, Ph Mihai Mălaimare Jr, Pro Des Martin Whist, Ed Tom Eagles, Music Jeymes Samuel, Costumes Antoinette Messam, Sound Richard King, Dialect coach Denise Woods.

Overbrook Entertainment-Netflix
136 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 3 November 2021. Cert. 15.