The movie has an unpredictable, quirky procession to it, you can the director was going for a Fargo-esque type of movie. It mostly works, with a few nits. Half the characters are cardboard cutouts, standard western fareโthe criminals that steal the shirt, the Warren Jeffries stand-in and his sons, and the character played by Sydney Sweeney do not have much character. The performances are good, but their characters are static. The mother character progresses the most, she literally abandons her son at the beginning of the movie but in the end reconciles with him. The son character changes too, in the beginning he is enamored of American Indian culture but at the end the scales have fallen from his eyes, he reminds me of the character in Breaking Away who venerates Italian bike racers until they sabotage him, then he returns to his โtribe.โ Even by the standards of a quirky movie , many plot devices donโt make sense. Why would the shirtโs owner not have an alarm system for a million dollar artifact? Why would the clothing store owner risk his life and a few hundred Gโs for it, doesnโt he have goons for that sort of thing? And (except to advance the plot) do Sydney Sweeney and the Afghanistan vet risk everything for something they donโt want or need? This being a movie in 2025, it goes without saying that white
Men have to be the bad guysโ the Warren Jeffries stand-ins. Which is ironic because they are the most innocent and blameless, they are minding their own business in their 1890s world, treating women like chattel, when all the other characters, who deserve their own fate to one extent or the other,come to them. This is an enjoyable, funny movie. Not as deep or memorable as No Country for Old Men but worth a watch.