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SERAPHIM FALLS
Directed by: David Von Ancken.
Produced by: Bruce Davey & David Flynn.
Written by: Von Ancken & Abby Everett Jaques.
Cinematography by: John Toll.
Edited by: Conrad Buff.
Released by: Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Country of Origin: USA. 111 min. Rated R.
With: Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Angelica Huston, Michael Wincott, Ed Lauter, Robert Baker, John Robinson, Kevin O’Connor, Angie Harmon & Tom Noonan.

For the first half-hour, cowriter/director David Von Ancken just throws the audience into not so much a story but a drawn-out chase through the snowy mountains of 1868 Nevada. Bounty hunter Carver (Liam Neeson) and his hired hands are after Gideon (Pierce Brosnan, much more rugged than in his James Bond days). At first, former Confederate Carver thinks he has got his man after a bullet hits Gideon in the shoulder, but his prey rolls away, daringly escaping, and somehow is totally resourceful in disposing of the bullet. (The film’s more gripping moments, by the way, occur when Von Ancken allows his actors to do lots of physical action).

Soon enough, along come the western clichés: the lone cabin with one horse and amiable youngsters, the Mormon wagon trail, the railroad builders, and the missionaries. Gideon, who had fought for the Union Army, is somehow very adept at being able to rest only for a moment and then moving along, and Carver doesn’t give a second thought in making things very hard on his fellow bounty hunters, who soon get killed off or leave at a quick clip. All the while the film seems fairly straightforward in its storytelling, which is just as well: the moments that hint at straying from the path of man-doggedly-after-man involve some very quick flashbacks to a dreadful incident at Seraphim Falls, GA, without too much explained. It becomes clearer though, at a crucial point and in keeping with the western movie tradition, that revenge is a major factor in this pursuit.

In a very formulaic way, the film works. It’s like a slightly modernized, slightly more violent version of something one might see on the AMC cable channel. But then at some point, when the characters go into the desert in the film’s last section, Von Ancken ups the ante on the strange and bizarre, to a sometimes exciting but usually to a really ludicrous effect, with the possible hallucinations of a random pipe smoking Indian and a strange woman (Angelica Huston) in a horse and buggy who has a special potion. Von Ancken doesn’t have the control of someone like Jim Jarmusch in subverting a genre that, up until a certain point, he’s kept to conventional standards.

Yet with these very distracting moments of the surreal, I wouldn’t say it’s unworthy of attention if you’ve been starved for the genre. As a first-time feature director, Von Ancken shows promise, with a firm grasp on dramatic beats if not totally on dialog. If only it was more memorable, or stretched the possibilities of the western more. Jack Gattanella
January 26, 2007