Chew's Reviews - Jane Got a Gun
https://www.elkgrovenews.net/2016/01/chews-reviews-jane-got-gun.html
By Gary
Chew |
January 30, 2016 |
Now showing |
As a
Western, Jane Got A Gun looks quite
authentic. It was shot
around Santa Fe. Landscapes are top notch in north central
New Mexico. There's
plenty of such of terrain to see in this new movie directed
by Gavin O'Connor.
The
rural sets of isolated homesteads and a wide-spot-in-the
road town where most of
the action takes place have a natural look and feel. The
plot, although
certainly not long on originality, is a pretty good one: a
young mother and wife
in the Old West fending off bad guys while doing all she can
to make life better
and safer for her little girl as well as her seriously
wounded husband after his
gun play with a typical bad guy gang with an oily boss. This
is reminiscent of
one of Jennifer Lawrence's early films, Winter’s
Bone.
Jane would
have been a been a
pretty good picture if the script had been written well and
an effort made to
avoid some of the cliches that have made many Westerns bite
the dust. Then about
those long pauses in the dialogue, apparently used to bring
a sense of gravity
for a particular moment that doesn't have any: maybe a good
deal less of those,
I'd say.
After
watching about half of Jane, I began to
keep my eyes shut
for longer periods of time (Not just blinks). Visually, I
knew, after that small
amount of running time, there was little that was soon to
happen I'd need to
know about. So, I just listened to the silence through those
long stretches of
zero conversation. The pace is not so much slow as it is
simply sagging.
O'Connor's has cast
some good actors:
Natalie Portman, who also is one of the producers of
Jane,
has the title role.
Joel Edgerton is her former fiance who's trekked all the way
from Missouri to
out west to find her, and Noah Emmerich is Jane's shot-up
spouse. His name is
Bill. And the other actor that made me want to see the film,
in the first place,
is Ewan McGregor; he plays Colin, the oily boss guy
leader.
They've got Ewan with his
hair all slicked back
with a generous mustache that seems like it might be well
lubricated too. I've
never seen Mr. McGregor do this kind of role. He made the
stretch hiding his
accent, but his performance in not comparable to others I've
seen him do in
previous films.
The
movie seems to want to perk itself up with several scenes in
which characters
are tortured. Pain is a big thing. Such stuff, along with
copious gun play, puts
Jane Got A Gun
into a spotlight of darkness even
though the pristine
natural background is easily seen just beyond all the staged
tumult.
It
also jumps back and forth in time. It's a little bit
confusing, at times, about
the whereabouts the story is taking place and the fact that
Edgerton and
Emmerich, from a distance, are not easily distinguished from
one another,
especially when they have on their hats.
The
most weighted and predictable cliché would be how
Jane Got A Gun
concludes. It comes with no surprise, since the
script has not had
anything clever about it, whatsoever, since the beginning.
How could it end any
other way?
Many
movies today showcase heroic females who kick ass and seldom
ask questions
before or after doing so. Natalie Portman, Jennifer
Lawrence, etc., are surely
wanting to stretch themselves as formidable women who, when
pushed, win the draw
and laugh all the way to the bank.
Copyright © 2016 by Gary Chew. All
rights
reserved.
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