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There really aren’t a lot of Canadian Westerns. Come to think of it, I cannot name a single one – for various reasons. So having that novelty work in its favour, Gunless could have been something special. It also could have taken the notion of a Western satire further than what has been done before, the possibilities definitely were there, being one of few films to explicitly address the in-bred and inherent American-ess of the genre (Leone aside). So, once upon a time in the north:
Notorious American gunslinger The Montana Kid (played by Canada’s most famous face Paul Gross) rides into a tiny Canadian hamlet tied to his horse after narrowly escaping his own hanging. Taking the tiny town’s well-meaning blacksmith for a horse thief, the Montana Kid resorts to the old macho code of challenging said blacksmith to a duel. Only problem is that this is Canada, so no one owns a gun to duel with, instead choosing to resolve problems the, you know, civilized way, like… talking things over. So the Kid gets stuck in the town until he can have his manhood-affirming duel, resorting to help the only person who owns a (non-functioning) gun, Jane (Sienna Guillory). The film intercuts two stories – the Montana Kid working for Jane to get said gun that used to belong to her late husband, while also tracing the Kid’s nemesis, Ben Cutter (Callum Keith Rennie) and how he gets closer and closer to capturing the Kid to get the reward (for he’s a business man, of course). Cue the inevitable showdown. Long story short, the plot is nothing new and the outcome is unsurprising. And while the cast had obvious fun, the satirical elements are somewhat lost amidst obvious physical comedy bits and harping on about how polite Canadians are compared to Americans. Nothing new, we’ve seen it in Due South 15 years ago.
The sad thing is, the set-up for a great statement about masculinity, violence, and the Western genre itself was there, but it never comes to anything beyond trite platitudes about said Western tropes and violence and what it means to be a man. Nothing that Peckinpah hasn’t done before in a less obvious way. The twist of it being a Canadian Western could have added a poignant statement, but, well, it doesn't as it relies too heavily on the basic premise of an American outlaw getting stranded in the "Dominion of Canada". And that may be the film’s biggest fault: it’s obviousness, down to outright stealing from Shane when it comes to uprooting a tree stump that turns into the starting point for the final shoot-out. The film’s too tongue-in-cheek and self aware to work as a Western satire. It does work as a Western comedy, though, so not all's lost. And on a good note, the cinematography is great. Paul Gross grunts his way through the film in one of the best Eastwood impersonations of late and only Rennie as the über-bad guy can add anything new, even though even his villain suffers from character bits that try to be too clever (we’re introduced to him as he shoots a puppy, okay? You cannot be more obvious than that in establishing a villain and the film lacks depth and true meta commentary to get away with that). But hey, it is fun to see Gross and Rennie share the frame again after eleven years if you remember the great show Due South. All in all, Gunless is mindless fun, nothing more, though it attempts to be too brainy and fails. |
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