The complete failure of the theatrical release of Seraphim Falls is difficult to fathom on the surface. It didn't wow critics but it had some positive reviews. It starred two popular actors, Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, both of whom have had their share of box office successes. It's a Western, which has a built in audience. It certainly didn't have blockbuster written all over it but it ended up with a very limited release which nobody went to (it grossed about $500,000 in the U.S.) and then disappeared to find a new audience on DVD.
Don't rush to be that audience, however. The people who stayed away from the theaters were onto something. While the story from the post-Civil War West boasts good performances and beautiful scenery, the plot meanders endlessly along without doing anything original. A bitter former Confederate Colonel Carver (Neeson) and his posse of four men ambush Gideon (Brosnan) in the mountains and chase him relentlessly. Gideon, a former Union captain, proves both resourceful and deadly in a series of encounters but is worn down (as are his pursuers) by the violence and the changing environmental conditions.
The length of the chase allows first-time feature director/co-writer David Von Ancken and cinematographer John Toll to produce some of the most amazing vistas since movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Covering snow-capped mountains, grassy prairies, and vacant desert, the scenes of men on horseback in wide-open country makes you want to grab your saddle and git to ridin'. But there isn't much more to the plot than the chase, which is something any Western fan has seen many times over. Near the end of the movie, the whole thing takes a misplaced turn as Von Ancken tries to have the two men stand in for a bigger theme of anti-war. Peacenicks might eat it up, but mostly it feels forced in, underexplained, and, along with a supernatural twist, out of place with what has gone before.
Brosnan gives a good performance of a man trying to atone for past sins (which led to Neeson's pursuit) but is basically solitary for much of the film and doesn't speak at all for the first 25 minutes. When you see some events from his past and try to gage their effect on him now, it's hard to care much since he hasn't revealed himself to any great extent. Neeson also does well as a man bent on revenge and letting little get in his way. His posse is filled with good character actors (Ed Lauter, Michael Wincott, John Robinson) but he comes across as pretty one-dimensional, much like the whole movie.
The ironic thing is that this is a movie that would be better served on the big screen. Some shots are truly breathtaking and the natural beauty of New Mexico is put on display in a way any Tourism Board would kill for. It would have been nice to see it, and the lead performances, serve a more compelling or original story. It's ok to say that war sucks and to use a Western to do it, but don't copy every Western that has come before. |
Seraphim Falls - DVD Review
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