Review: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers
Cert: 15 / 122 mins / Dir. Jacques Audiard / Trailer



I have, to put it mildly, a rough track record with Western-type movies (both vintage and modern), to the point where I'm never sure if it's a genre or setting that I actually enjoy. But let's face it folks, with a cast like John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed, there's got to be something to enjoy in The Sisters Brothers, right?

Right. Jacques Audiard's cinematic rendering of Patrick DeWitt's novel sees the eponymous brothers (Reilly, Phoenix) heading west to San Francisco on the trail of a bounty (Ahmed, who befriends and drags in Gyllenhaal en route), while fending off fellow outlaws as well as each other's bickering, bad luck and poor judgement.

MOMENTS

The film is not 'a comedy', but there are plenty of amusing moments (certainly far more than the one which preceded it), and begins with quite possibly the bleakest opening sequence in living memory. It's brutally violent in several places; never exploitatively so, but Audiard is certainly unflinching in his bloodshed. And yet, this can be more properly called a character-study, with the fantastic performances you expect from the central cast*¹ and beyond.

For a movie which is a combined road trip and low-speed chase, The Sisters Brothers is an oddly paced affair. Not slow throughout, just uneven and ponderous. Although again, there's the feeling that the parts which I didn't connect with are more to do with my reservations about Westerns than this film itself.

JOHNSON

An audible ripple went through the auditorium during 'the spider-scene' (and again shortly afterward in its payoff moment). One of the few examples where mild breaking of The Code is probably permissible. By the time you add on a wonderfully relatable script and Benoît Debie's gorgeous cinematography, it's fair to call this something of a mixed bag, even if all the elements appear to be pulling in largely the right direction.

What begins loud ends quiet, and although the eponymous pair have more than earned their rest by the two hour mark, there's the feeling that it would have been more satisfying for this to be implied rather than shown. Had the title card made an appearance when they reached the gate five minutes earlier, the more ambiguous ending would have been - perhaps ironically - far more satisfying…

This is a film that's relatively unique to me, stylistically. It would be reductive and unhelpful to cite Django Unchained here, not least because The Sisters Brothers is nowhere near as desperate to be hip, but let's go with that anyway.



For the cinematography, just about.



It is.



With a cast this good? It's not, but hey.



Discuss, certainly - disagree, not necessarily.



There isn't.



Level 1: Bodhi Rook's in this.





*¹ What the hell kind of accent is Gyllenhaal meant to be doing, though? It's not American, it's certainly not British. I can imagine that in the expansion-era of 1851 it would be possible to have acquired a mix of the two, but this is just distracting... ^{[ BACK ]}


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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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