Mild, mild west in the 'Dominion of Canada'
Canadians are a good, decent, smart and funny people who can make good, decent and smart movies. What eludes us, with all due respect to Porky's, is the funny ones.
The latest effort is Gunless, a western about a ruthless but honourable killer and his adventures in a tongue-in-cheek Canada. It's a genial enough comedy that's a combination of love story, cultural critique, farce and revenge yarn, which means it's none of them.
It's set in 1882, in a mild, mild West, and the notorious gunslinger The Montana Kid, a desperado who has killed 11 men, is played by Paul Gross -- a good, decent, smart and funny guy, as it happens, but one whose good looks, gleaming smile, and essential gallantry shine through, even when they cover him in dirt and stick a mane of long black hair on his head. He looks like a model on an adventure holiday.
The Kid is the violent American in a film about what happens when Yankee vengeance stumbles into Canadian pacifism, except you never buy Gross as anything but a Canuck in disguise. When he rides into the small town of Barclay's Brush in what someone calls the Dominion of Canada ( "just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse," snarls The Kid), it seems more like a homecoming than an invasion.
The Kid arrives backwards on his horse and with a noose around his neck. He has just escaped a hanging, and a gang of bounty hunters led by Ben (Callum Keith Rennie, scarred and spitting frequently) is on the way to capture him. But meanwhile, the Kid has a score to settle: The local blacksmith (Tyler Mane from X-Men) has insulted him, and he demands a shootout.
But this is Canada, and no one has any handguns. So the kid has to hang around until someone fixes up an old revolver. This is a strange plot twist, but fortunately, the hanging around's pretty good.
This is mostly due to the presence of Jane (British actress Sienna Guillory, who carries a Cate Blanchett-like air of intelligent beauty), a pretty widow who needs help installing a windmill on her property (Montana Kid: "Why don't you get your husband to get it up?" which is about as close as Gunless gets to raucous sexuality.)
However, the characters aren't as colourfully eccentric as the screenplay wants them to be, and a sense of irony just about swamps Gunless, especially in the performance of Guillory, who maintains a half-smile of complicity. Gross keeps up the pretence of bloody-mindedness, but it's not entirely convincing: The Kid seems more realistic when he softens at the edges and becomes the fair-minded citizen we knew he always was.
Written and directed by William Phillips, Gunless is like a Canadian remake of Shane, one in which the killer learns to lay down his weapons at the end of the film instead of picking them up again. It's an intriguing idea that Gunless doesn't look at too deeply. It's too easygoing for that, but what do you expect from the Dominion of Canada?
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
SOURCE
The latest effort is Gunless, a western about a ruthless but honourable killer and his adventures in a tongue-in-cheek Canada. It's a genial enough comedy that's a combination of love story, cultural critique, farce and revenge yarn, which means it's none of them.
It's set in 1882, in a mild, mild West, and the notorious gunslinger The Montana Kid, a desperado who has killed 11 men, is played by Paul Gross -- a good, decent, smart and funny guy, as it happens, but one whose good looks, gleaming smile, and essential gallantry shine through, even when they cover him in dirt and stick a mane of long black hair on his head. He looks like a model on an adventure holiday.
The Kid is the violent American in a film about what happens when Yankee vengeance stumbles into Canadian pacifism, except you never buy Gross as anything but a Canuck in disguise. When he rides into the small town of Barclay's Brush in what someone calls the Dominion of Canada ( "just when you thought that it couldn't get any worse," snarls The Kid), it seems more like a homecoming than an invasion.
The Kid arrives backwards on his horse and with a noose around his neck. He has just escaped a hanging, and a gang of bounty hunters led by Ben (Callum Keith Rennie, scarred and spitting frequently) is on the way to capture him. But meanwhile, the Kid has a score to settle: The local blacksmith (Tyler Mane from X-Men) has insulted him, and he demands a shootout.
But this is Canada, and no one has any handguns. So the kid has to hang around until someone fixes up an old revolver. This is a strange plot twist, but fortunately, the hanging around's pretty good.
This is mostly due to the presence of Jane (British actress Sienna Guillory, who carries a Cate Blanchett-like air of intelligent beauty), a pretty widow who needs help installing a windmill on her property (Montana Kid: "Why don't you get your husband to get it up?" which is about as close as Gunless gets to raucous sexuality.)
However, the characters aren't as colourfully eccentric as the screenplay wants them to be, and a sense of irony just about swamps Gunless, especially in the performance of Guillory, who maintains a half-smile of complicity. Gross keeps up the pretence of bloody-mindedness, but it's not entirely convincing: The Kid seems more realistic when he softens at the edges and becomes the fair-minded citizen we knew he always was.
Written and directed by William Phillips, Gunless is like a Canadian remake of Shane, one in which the killer learns to lay down his weapons at the end of the film instead of picking them up again. It's an intriguing idea that Gunless doesn't look at too deeply. It's too easygoing for that, but what do you expect from the Dominion of Canada?
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
SOURCE