The Harder They Fall. A typical western in many ways - apart from that pretty much everyone is black. It made me look up some stuff, and I learned for the first time that about a quarter of all cowboys were actually black. That fits with other things I've been reading about black people far outnumbering white people in North America until mass migration in the 19th century (or something along those lines), so that was interesting and something I'd like to learn more about. (Also the way black people and Native Americans interacted; there is a lot of super interesting stuff that the usual white-focused history does not mention.) The film itself though: not so much.
It's a vengeance tale about a guy hunting down the gang that killed his parents when he was young. At the start of the film, he kills one of the gang's members, which means that only its boss remains. He's in prison, but soon gets out and returns to the town he 'owns'. Cue a showdown.
The first half hour or so has a good pace and a couple of cool stylistic ideas. Some of that style remains, but the pace completely evaporates. There is far too much talking and positioning in the film, developing and emphasizing a plot that I couldn't care less about. In short, I was immensely bored from about an hour into the film, when I realized that the pace and fun of the first 30 min really weren't coming back. The shootout at the end is OK, but makes little sense. (For example: why do you only see the shooters on the roof when someone shoots them, not when the protagonist is running unprotected through the middle of the street?) And then there is a big reveal at the very end, but it does nothing for the plot, since the reveal has zero consequences; its says nothing about anyone's motivations for their actions in the film, and doesn't change the outcome you expected since the very first scene.
So, not for me.
Also, reading up on the film afterwards, I learned that all the main characters in the film refer to real historical people (e.g.,
Nat Love,
Stagecoach Mary,
Rufus Buck). That's cool, but the characters in the film have next to nothing to do with the real people; they are basically completely different persons with the same name. And if you read what the Rufus Buck Gang did (a bunch of cruel evil thugs) and then see him portrayed by Idris Elba as a kind of bandit philosopher king, I feel it's not very respectful to Rufus Buck's victims. It was good acting though, and I really liked Jonathan Majors here and in The Last Black Man in San Francisco. (And probably also in Hostiles, since that's an awesome film, but I can't clearly remember his individual performance there.)
