Ballad of Lefty Brown, The (2017) [Blu-ray]
Western

When famed frontier lawman and Montana's first elected senator Eddie Johnson (Peter Fonda) is brutally murdered, his longtime sidekick and friend, Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman), will stop at nothing to avenge his death. A thrilling and action-packed Western, The Ballad of Lefty Brown is a story about loyalty, friendship, and the relentless pursuit of justice.

Storyline: When cowboy Lefty Brown witnesses the murder of his longtime partner, the newly-elected Senator Edward Johnson. He strikes out to find the killers and avenge his friend's gruesome death. Tracking the outlaws across the vast and desolate Montana plains, Lefty recruits a young gunslinger, Jeremiah, and an old friend, a hard-drinking U.S. Marshall, to help deliver the men to justice. After a gunfight with the outlaws leaves Jeremiah wounded, Lefty returns home with the names of Johnson's killers only to find that he is being accused of his friend's murder. With the tables turned, and with his friend in the governor's mansion refusing to help, Lefty must evade the law and prove his innocence by exposing the powerful men ultimately responsible for Johnson's death. Written by AsH

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 12, 2018 In days of yore (like, maybe the from around the 1930s to the 1950s), Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman) would have been the kind of secondary character in a western that could very well have been played by someone like George "Gabby" Hayes or maybe even Walter Brennan. And in fact Pullman's characterization of this perhaps slightly daft guy has a certain Hayes-ian and/or Brennan-esque feeling about it, with Pullman kind of slurring his words and shuffling around as if he's about ready to fall over at any given moment, often while wearing a scruffy looking hat which is more than a bit reminiscent of one of Hayes' stocks in trade. The Ballad of Lefty Brown goes to some lengths to combine aspects of traditional and so- called "revisionist" westerns, and to a certain extent, it actually succeeds, elevating what would have been a "sidekick" to "starring player" status. Lefty is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and in fact he seems incapable of completing even seemingly simple tasks like pounding a fencepost into the hardscrabble ground, but he has a long history with Eddie Johnson (Peter Fonda), who has just been elected Senator from Montana in the 1880s. An opening vignette documents both Lefty's inadequacies as a backup guy during a shootout, while also detailing Johnson's proclivities as an instant judge, jury and executioner. There's already the feeling that there's a lot of history between these two men, a history that informs their relationship in ways that Johnson's wife Laura (Kathy Baker) can't understand. Laura is especially concerned that Eddie wants to appoint Lefty as ranch foreman during his necessary absence when he starts working in Washington, D.C. A sudden case of horse rustling pushes Laura's concerns to the back burner, but in just one of several sudden and unexpected outbursts of violence, as Eddie and Lefty discuss whether or not Lefty should be left in charge (even Lefty isn't convinced), one of the horse thieves fatally shoots Eddie, leading to what in essence turns out to be a revenge drama, albeit one stuffed with all sorts of subterfuge that starts spilling out once the complete backstory of Lefty, Eddie and two other men who were part of a long ago "team" show up in the wake of Eddie's death.

Those two other guys turns out to be pretty high placed Montanan officials themselves, Governor Jimmy Bierce (Jim Caviezel) and United States Marshal Tom Harrah (Tom Flanagan). They arrive at the Johnson homestead ostensibly to relay their condolences to their former buddy's widow, but private conversations indicate they really want to keep track of Lefty, who has vowed to find Eddie's killer and bring him back to justice. There's obviously something going on here, but writer-director Jared Moshé keeps his cinematic cards fairly close to his vest, leaving the bulk of the revelations to the expected final showdown.

Lefty ends up "meeting cute" (or at least what passes for meeting cute in a western) with a kid named Jeremiah (Diego Josef), a wannabe gunslinger with a love of dime store publications detailing the exploits of his favorite wild west heroes. When Harrah manages to track down both of them, Lefty wants to keep Harrah captive, but when Jeremiah recognizes him as one of the "characters" from the books he loves so much, all bets are off, and soon enough it's a trio of vengeance seekers trying to track down the guy who killed Eddie Johnson.

Meanwhile, the film continues to ping pong back to Laura at the homestead, where she is obviously more than capable of handling most day to day tasks (and may in fact be more capable than any of the ranchhands). However, her future is put in doubt with a stunning revelation from Bierce, who is obviously (perhaps too obviously) playing some kind of chess game, moving characters around like virtual pawns. A number of sometimes overheated exchanges result at both the ranch and out in the wild with the trio of mismatched "partners", with a couple of harrowing shootouts ensuing that leave one character badly wounded. By the time Lefty returns to Laura with mission more or less accomplished, he finds his future in doubt due to a telegram Laura has received which claims that Lefty is responsible for her husband's death. The fact that all of this transpires by about the halfway point of this arguably at least slightly overlong film may indicate just how "novelistic" Moshé's screenplay turns out to be.

While The Ballad of Lefty Brown is long on mood and contains some generally excellent performances (more about that in a moment), it suffers from a couple of odd decisions that Moshé makes, including his seeming assertion that (despite the "ballad" in the title) he's dealing with real life characters. A cursory review of Montana's history shows that there was never a governor named James Bierce, and considering the climax of this film, one which includes an outright felony, that deprives some of the expected impact from actually finding its target, since everything is obviously a folktale. In terms of performances, for me personally the hands down winner in this film was Kathy Baker, who makes Laura part harridan boss, part conniving "rhymes with witch" and part vulnerable homesteader out to protect her property. Pullman is interesting to watch in this film, but I continually wondered if he was perhaps too mannered. In fact his performance reminded me of a long ago set of videos I purchased for some unknown reason that featured none other than Max Headroom star Matt Frewer as the iconic Sherlock Holmes. I remember turning to my wife after having watched a couple of these outings and saying "I can't decide whether I'm watching an actor give an impressively quirky performance or one of the more serious cases of miscasting I've ever seen." I would never go so far as to say Pullman is miscast in this role, but it's kind of a shame that Gabby or Walter couldn't have been available for the part.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown subverts at least one traditional western trope by elevating a perceived sidekick to featured player status, but in many other ways it's a surprisingly rote trip through a duplicitous history coming back to haunt various characters. Still, despite a certain familiarity to some of the proceedings, director Jared Moshé certainly has a genuine feel for this genre, and despite some perhaps overly precious elements, the film really has both style and content of its own. Technical merits are strong, and The Ballad of Lefty Brown comes Recommended.

[CSW] -2.9- I agree with this reviewer:
An excellent movie, and an even better Western. Bill Pullman delivers maybe the performance of his career as Lefty Brown, a man who has lived his long life in the shadow of a great man. Through a series of simple acts, Pullman portrays Lefty as a man with unexpected values and strength of character, to the surprise of everyone. Cinematography makes great use of western vistas and rustic buildings to give an authentic Western feel. This shows that great movies rely on solid acting and writing, not high octane scenes. Don't miss this understated gem.

[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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