A Western only by the technicality of its setting: California gold country, 1867. Michael Winterbottom, who earlier brought Jude the Obscure to the screen, takes the plot premise from Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, but most everything else from Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller: the jerry-built town, the brothel, the snow, the slushy mise-en-scène, the colorless color, the muzzled performances, the monotony. The horse afire is lifted from Franju, Thomas the Imposter, though with neither the realism nor the poetry. Peter Mullan, Sarah Polley, Wes Bentley, Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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