Seraphim Falls

I grew up in the Mountain West. I know how to track, ride, and shoot, and I know that hypothermia can be deadlier than bullets. When SERAPHIM FALLS began in the Mountain West with characters who track, ride, shoot, and nearly succumb to hypothermia, it earned my immediate and total buy-in. When able stars Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson enacted the line, "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed," it pegged my Cool Meter. When Anjelica Huston, in a great bit of stunt casting, intoned, "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," I thought, 'Now, there's a western!"

The story begins in the High Sierra, where Neeson and his henchmen attack an unsuspecting Brosnan, who barely escapes with his life. Wait a minute - it's Liam Neeson! He's usually a good guy! And so's Brosnan! What's going on here? Those questions provide much of the film's dramatic tension, as we try to figure out what, exactly, is going on and why. But there's no time for that, at first. At first, it's all running and sliding and nearly drowning or bleeding to death or dying of the aforementioned hypothermia, in addition to my beloved riding, tracking, and shooting. Brosnan does career-best work as he gives us desperation, determination, and bafflement. His portrayal of a man at the edge of death brough to mind Jack London's "To Build a Fire," and I completely bought that he was just moments away from feeling warm all over and laying down to sleep.

Cinematographer John Toll does absolutely brilliant work here, as well. He brings to life the mountains, the desert, and places in between with such care and clarity that I could almost smell the pine tar and juniper berries. He creates the mythic West by taking much of the myth out of it, and he made me feel homesick for the first time in years.

SERAPHIM FALLS isn't a big movie. It's a revenge picture, and a chase picture, and a personal picture. But it's also very much a western, and it felt true to the West as I understand it. I'm glad I saw it.