Review: The Sisters Brothers
The Sisters Brothers, the first English-language film from award-winning French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone) is a curious creation. Goofily comic, cruel and violent in a manner that would make Sam Peckinpah proud, and also gut-punchingly poignant and profound, the film is also a meditation on sibling revelry and rivalry and the unexpected bonds that form out in the wilderness of the Wild West.
The time is 1851 and traversing the harsh terrain between Oregon and California, the film begins with the Sisters brothers, Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) and Eli (John C. Reilly), as they emerge from the dead of night to slaughter an entire house of men, and ends with the two of them walking away as a barn burns behind them. The brothers are hitmen in the employ of one wealthy man named The Commodore (Rutger Hauer), who sends them out to torture and kill the seemingly endless stream of men who have stolen from him. The hard-drinking, short-tempered Charlie is unquestioning of their violent life, chalking it up to inheriting their father's foul blood. The older Eli, on the other hand, wonders how so many men could rob so dangerous a figure as The Commodore, and begins to ponder retirement.
Before the brothers can come to a resolution on what to do with their lives, they are tasked by The Commodore to rendezvous with John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal), a bounty hunter who has been tracking a prospector named Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), who seems to have struck upon a water-based formula that makes it easy to discover gold in river beds. Morris is a mournful and reflective sort, with Gyllenhaal delivering a portrayal that might be described as Buster Keaton by way of Donnie Darko, and he and the idealistic Warm develop a rapport that is in stark contrast to the brothers' bickering.
Whilst some viewers may find the whole affair to be a tad leisurely for their liking, there's much to admire and appreciate in The Sisters Brothers, from Benoît Debie's painterly visuals to Alexandre Desplat's jewel of a score, to the surprising eloquence (halting via the Sisters and articulate via Warm and Morris) of its main quartet, to the way Audiard bends the rules of the genre to execute his vision. That viewers should care at all for these ruthless and ridiculous men is a testament to the exemplary work of Phoenix, Gyllenhaal, Ahmed, and especially Reilly, who beautifully personifies the sad-funny hybrid that courses through The Sisters Brothers.
The Sisters Brothers
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Written by: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain; based on the novel by Patrick deWitt
Starring: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rutger Hauer, Carol Kane, Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman
