The year is misleading; this film was shot nearly four years ago, but is only just now finding its way into a theaters for a few weeks.  It went through development hell, switching directors, crew members and stars before Gavin O’Connor stepped in to get it done.  As a result it has received almost no publicity, which is a shame, because the film itself is pretty good.

It’s a twisty kind of western revenge story.  Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich) returns to his ranch with five bullets in him; his wife Jane (Natalie Portman) can only remove four.  He tells her that bad guys are on the way to finish the job.  She turns to the only other man she trusts, Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton), her former fiancé.  Frost helps her prepare for the siege, while flashbacks fill in their troubled past relationship.  And then the shooting starts.

The script, with Edgerton credited as one of its writers, is excellent.  Little by little stories are revealed, and each character becomes increasingly dimensional — and surprising.  No one is quite who one thinks they are, at least not anymore.  And the stark, deadly desert setting really works to isolate these characters.  It’s violent, too, but not in a lascivious, Tarantino-esque way; the violence here flows naturally from the situation and characters, and it’s more sickening than glorious, just as it should be.

Westerns have been passé since the 1970s, but the genre is still viable (as Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven proved in 1990-91).  Compelling stories still abound to be told, in western settings that allow their dramas to achieve the quality of timelessness.  This is one of them; I’m glad I caught it in a theater.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  4 February 2016.