The Proposition – Western Blu-ray movie review

Australia is a country in the throws of settlement by the English and lawlessness is rife. As the bloody clearing of aborigines continues, one gang's attack on a white family causes outrage. The pressure is on Captain Stanley to bring in the Burns gang, led by the sadistic and heartless Arthur. When Stanley's men capture the two younger brothers he strikes a deal with Charlie, the elder of the two. In nine days time, on Christmas Day, young Mike will hang unless Charlie has returned with his brother – dead or alive.

A staggeringly moving and uncompromising examination of contemporary emotions set against our early settlement history. The first thing I noticed about this film was the look of Guy Pearce's character's hair-dirty and stringy-something that Hollywood with it's pretensions and million-dollar babies would never allow. But these people looked bad, acted bad and I'm sure-smelt bad. In short, they were real people and they acted as real people in those monstrously uncompromising times would have acted.

The plot is a simple, classic genre plot: a band of outlaw brothers rape and pillage a good Christian family and then comes the more complicated revenge, loyalty and morality drama that will blow you away. Winstone's man of the law gives Pearce's criminal a proposition: bring home his third brother, responsible for a hideous crime, or he will kill his weak younger brother. The mythological overtones are perfectly done as are the inferences to Conrad's Hearts of Darkness. Huston's character is like a version of Kurtz. The characters are all ambiguous in their motives and every actor is game for the challenge...

Guy Pearce as lead character Charlie Burns has garnered plenty of praise for his role but in truth, the real focus of the story is on Ray Winstone's performance as Captain Stanley. As the leader of the local police force, Stanley is a conflicted man. He is determined to civilise this land but isn't afraid to use underhanded means to achieve it resulting in the unresolvable moral dilemma when he sends Burns to kill one brother in order to save another. Furthermore, he has the unenviable task of sheltering his innocent wife from the reality of their situation, a task which is testing him to breaking point and driving a wedge through their marriage. In conveying all this Winstone is never less than captivating. He is full of pride and resolve but is let down by the fact his London morals do not apply in this insane lawless land and he deserves as much adulation as possible for his portrayal of wounded male pride.

Deliberately paced and filled with jarring images of violence and dread, The Proposition is not easily forgotten and it makes an impact. The script is well written by Cave, takes no shortcuts and doesn't sugarcoat the violent era it's portraying. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the film very much, didn't always get the philosophical mumbling but in the end the film makes you think and you won't forget it for a while.

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Unforgiven – Blu-ray movie review

"Unforgiven" may well be Clint Eastwood's greatest triumph as an actor and director. In this grim, dark, and yet strangely beautiful story of former gunslinger William Munny (Eastwood), who comes out of retirement for one last job, Eastwood deliberately sets out to demystify the old West. This is evident in the conversations between Munny and the Schofield Kid (Jaimze Wolvett), who has a romanticized image of the old-time gunfighters, and between sheriff Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) and hack journalist W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek). Yet the "demythologizing" message doesn't feel forced; it is woven effortlessly into a gripping story that powerfully conveys the human cost of violence.

Eastwood said he wanted to bury the western with this film, the script for which had apparently been knocking around Hollywood for the best part of 20 years, and he couldn't have found a better film with which to achieve his aim. There are no heroes in this film, and the differences between good and bad are deliberately blurred. Munney is ostensibly a good man, a pig farmer struggling to bring up his children following the death of his beloved wife. In the first half of the film he repeatedly insists that he is a changed man, that he is like normal people – but there's always that sense of a man trying to convince himself of the fact, and that he's not entirely sure that what he says is true. Hackman is a rigid upholder of the law, but by anyone's standards he is a harsh and brutal man, inflicting unnecessary punishment on those he considers to have broken a law designed to protect the innocent. But the true downtrodden innocents here aren't the honest townsfolk – they're the town whores, usually depicted as representatives of debauchery or comedy figures. Murder isn't a quick and spectacular event – it's a long, drawn-out panicky suffering, or it's a couple of bullets in the chest when you're sitting on the loo. All the genre staples are turned on their head here and, in doing so, writer David Webb Peoples fashions a tale that delivers an unremittingly bleak and depressing message that is never anything less than totally absorbing.

Westerns are typified by clearly defined goodies and baddies, but this is definitely not the case here. Eastwood and Freeman play reformed killers who find circumstances drawing them once again to their evil ways. But the older and wiser men now realize the value of life and come face to face with their troubled consciences. This is unlike their naïve, young partner who is attracted to the bravado image of the killer and relishes taking a man's life. This moral issue is virtually taboo for the classic western which glamorizes the lawlessness and the hero attraction of the gunslinger. This is also why in my view no-one besides Eastwood should have handled this movie.

Its hard to find a hero in this film. Eastwood, Freeman and Woolvett are after all, bounty hunters. By his own admission William Munny describes himself as someone who has killed women and children and just about everything that walks in his lifetime. Hackman's character has good intentions in discouraging the gunfighters but cannot control his hair trigger temper. The only sympathetic characters are the saloon girls as they try to find justice for their dishonored colleague.

Nominated for nine Academy Awards and winning four major ones, "Unforgiven" becomes only the third Western ever to win the Best Picture Academy Award after "Cimarron" (1930/31) and "Dances with Wolves" (1990).

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3:10 to Yuma – Western Blu-ray movie review

It's one of the best westerns and best all-around movies I've seen in a long time. That's largely due to the outstanding performances by the cast, ably led by the alpha male, bad guy, Russell Crowe. His protagonist is Christian Bale who turns in a nuanced performance as the down-on-his luck rancher. The scenes between these two men are riveting and a display of acting at its best. The supporting cast are all wonderful and in particular, Ben Foster, Fonda and Logan Lerman as Bale's oldest son.

Mangold's film is a tense, traditional western based on an Elmore Leonard story. Leonard is a solid writer, and gave the material upon which the film is based enough background and characterization to permit willful suspension of disbelief. Mangold's film does the same. Our protagonist and antagonist are, respectively, Dan Evans (Bale) and Ben Wade (Crowe). Evans is a would-be rancher and family-man whose family is suffering from a drought and a merciless landlord. Evans and his boys cross paths with notorious outlaw Ben Wade and his gang on their way into town to confront their landlord, and Wade whimsically lets them go. But the connection between these two men and Dan's eldest son is far from over. Eventually Dan will accept an offer made by a railroad agent to help escort Wade to a train headed to Yuma prison, while Wade's crew of murderers dogs their every step.

Although there's plenty of gunplay and death by bullets, this is much more of a psychological drama than anything else. Wade, as played coldly (but not charmlessly) by Crowe, has two goals in mind: gain the mental upper hand on Evans, an untrained rancher, and gain his escape from the clutches of law and order. Meanwhile, although Evans' intentions are less murky, he's not some squinty-eyed sharpshooter whose aim is always true; he's not an iconic hero who you just know is gonna save the day. Bale is terrific; you can really see the anguish he feels as a supposed failure in the eyes of his sons. In the hands of lesser actors, these two complex roles would have seemed less symbiotic and therefore less sincere. For example, apparently Movie Guy Tom Cruise was initially supposed to have Wade's role; if that had come to fruition, we would have been distracted by Movie Star Tom Cruise, and the movie would have suffered terribly as a result.

This film is not about the gun battles or the wild west. It's about the characters. These characters are so deep and as we become so involved with them we are left rooting for them and hoping something doesn't happen that seems inevitable. The final lines of the film are said by Dan Evans' son and Charlie Prince. Both said to Dan Evans. We can get a sense of joy during these final moments because we know everything that happened up until that point went exactly as planed by Evans, and we get a sense of triumph in an odd way. This is a great film regardless of genre. It's also the best Western I've ever seen.

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Lonesome Dove Blu-ray movie review

Lonesome Dove tells the story of friendship, love, tragedy, life, change, the frontier, the passing of generations. The bonds of friendship and camaraderie displayed in this movie are those born of deep, abiding respect. The central characters earn the respect of their peers over and over through sacrifice and courage.

The people who inhabit this tale are as real and unforgettable as any in great film or literature. Partly the result of high-caliber acting performances, these characters also benefit from the epic length of the film, which allows them to grow convincingly. This is above all a tale of human connections. Central to it is the long, deep friendship of Gus and the Captain. These two contrasting men have built around them what is essentially an extended family, but one made up of friends and associates whose connections are as strong as blood. One of the most distinctive and moving features of the film is its emphasis on men and their emotions. The Captain with his reigned-in feelings, Gus with his widely encompassing love, and the unequivocal, overwhelming love between these two friends are the solid ground upon which the story is told.

The casting in Lonesome Dove was simply oustanding, with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones becoming Call and Woodrow, so good were they in their respective parts. The supporting cast including Angelica Houston,Diane Lane, Danny Glover,Chris Cooper, Barry Corbin,Ricky Schroeder,Robert Urich(may you rest in peace),right down to Helena Humann as Peach, gave us the best supporting cast performances in a western series in years. Simply put, this is the finest western ever.

For those who love good film, and especially westerns, LD is a masterpiece of film work. Few westerns films have ever captured the real cowboy genre any better, and those are probably documentaries. Perhaps that is how LD should best be described: a compelling doc-u-drama, for the setting, characters and props are dead-solid accurate. And now, the masterpiece is available on Blu-ray format.

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