The Sister Brothers (2018)

 

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (2018)

By Ralph Santini - ***½ 

There have been some speculation about the reception and radar status of French director Jacques Audiard’s western with dark comic touches “The Sisters Brothers”. All I know is that it’s his first film in English and it’s a coproduction between French and American filmmakers and that the director co-wrote the script with Thomas Bidegain as an adaptation of a same name book by Patrick De Witt who’s from Canada. The title role is given by two millennium Hollywood greats John C. Reilly (co-producer of the movie as well) as Eli and Joaquin Phoenix (excellent) as Charlie. Their objective is to hunt down a young scientist (Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed) on the hunt for gold with the “help” of a private investigator played by the equally excellent Jake Gyllenhaal. Coming back to the film’s speculation the film apparently bombed at the box office and there have been some criticism with the film’s dark comic traits confusing some reviewers, including Owen Gleiberman, formerly who said and quote “he Sisters Brothers is too light to be a true drama and too heavy to be a comedy”. Personally I didn’t mind any of that because I think this film is brilliant from start to finish.

A corrupt commodore (The sadly late Rutger Hauer) offers two gunslingers known as the Sisters Brothers to hunt down a young chemist named Herman Kermit Warm who wants to find some valuable gold in the west. That same young chemist is not only pursued by the Sisters Brothers themselves but also Private Investigator, John Morris. We are first told that Morris wants to actually befriend the chemist by disguising himself as a journalist. It turns out that Morris P.I. job happens to be co-involved with that of the Sisters Brothers engineered by the commodore. Warm’s goal is to go on a trial headed for Jacksonville. No, it’s not the well-known city in Florida, it’s actually a roughly-similarly named town in Oregon which, yes, in fact exists. So like I said The Sisters Brothers and John Morris are both involved in this job against Mr. Warm. Morris is supposed to hand over this scientist to the Sisters Brothers, however Warm gets wise by staring at Morris’ handcuffs. So the scientist gives the private gumshoe a surprise at gunpoint attempting to escape but unfortunately he is put under restraint. We then get the answer concerning the scientist’s goal and that is to find gold so he can develop a chemical formula. The only problem is that the Sisters brothers must retrieve that formula for the absolute, no-good commodore. Morris then spares Warm then both of them leave Jacksonville. Warm then explains that the chemical formula is to free American society from all evils of mankind starting with Dallas, Texas.

Considering the unfortunate bombing at the box-office, I think this is a true miracle of 21^st century filmmaking. Both Reilly and Phoenix have terrific chemistry as the constantly bickering brothers who would make one big slappy family. There is an absolutely hilarious scene where Reilly is upset because he retorts Phoenix that he hit him, so Phoenix hysterically tells him to hit him back and Reilly punches him with pleasures. I also love the movie’s dark sense of humor because the old west was never exactly a pleasant place to live. In fact that’s what makes this film superior to Seth McFarlane’s simple but tired “A Million Ways To Die In The West”. It’s a colossal leap forward in the sense that “The Sisters Brothers” is, as the way I personally see it, a Western parody but with more intellectual traits and darker comic slapstick. Credit must also be given by the rest of the cast, particularly Riz Ahmed as the consciously aware scientist and Jake Gylenhaal as the private investigator.