Pierce Brosnan spent seven long years playing James Bond when he could have been making great indie films like this. Seraphim Falls is a Western in the tradition of John Ford’s The Searchers, that model tales of vengeance across the untamed West. What begins in the snow-drenched hills of the American Southwest ends atop a lake of boiling sand, where Brosnan’s Gideon and an old Confederate colonel, played by Liam Neeson, finally confront one another over the past.
The past, as it happens, is presented to us in flashbackÑthe worst aspect of the film. While others deride David Von Ancken’s feature debut for its slow descent into the bizarreÑa Native American at a puddle of water, Angelica Houston as an underhanded mystical peddler (apparently, you can’t do a great American Western without some member of the Houston family involved)Ñit’s those aspects that make Seraphim Falls so enthralling. The American West was a cruel ideaÑa borderless realm of misery and sedition made into mystical shining gold by dime novelists. The depiction of the world beyond the Mississippi River, post-1850s, is one of surprise, deception, and death.
by Adam Balz | Source: Destination Films DVD
23 Aug 2007 2:04 PM | Submit Comment
