About every five years one comes along that is worth watching from a writer not influenced by the current woke agenda that seeks to inject a version of fantasy instead of history, you know the kind I am talking about: where any color other than white makes up the majority of the cast and lesbian gunslingers save the day?
I can count on one hand the best western movies of the last decade:
True Grit (2010)
The Homesman (2014)
The Revenant (2015)
Hostiles (2017)
Old Henry (2021)
Old Henry stars one of my favorite actors, Tim Blake Nelson, whose body of work includes such films as O’ Brother Where Art Thou?, The Homesman and Child of God just to name a few.
Old Henry is superbly written, with some down home wisdom that will make you smile:
Son: “I still don’t believe this is what you wanted; up at dawn, feeding the stock, working the crops, hot or cold, rain or shine.”
Old Henry: “You’ll discover there’s worse arrangements.”
I also really enjoyed how the movie dived head first into the duality of the gunfighter mythos and historical reality.
I remember watching Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) when I was a youngster (which I still consider one of Sam Peckinpah’s finest works next to the The Wild Bunch (1969) and I immediately got hooked on the story and mythos surrounding Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.
To Hell on a Fast Horse is one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of Billy the Kid, aka William Bonney, aka Henry Atrim, aka Henry McCarty.
