It is Oregon in 1851. Eli (John C Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) are hired guns. Having just returned to Oregon City after a job, their employer sends them on a new mission: track down Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed), extract information from him, then kill him. To help in this task, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) had already been dispatched to trail Warm. Morris is only a scout, not a gunman. The brothers find themselves traveling into California and the Gold Rush. Warm is a chemist who has a particular formula for extracting gold.
The movie is mostly concerned with the relationships of Eli and Charlie and, to a lesser extent, Morris and Warm. Charlie, though younger, is the driving force of the brothers. Where Eli is ready to try something different, Charlie is ambitious to replace their employer. Where Eli would walk away, Charlie is eager for a fight. By contrast, Morris and Warm talk about building an ideal society that would purge violence.
Where most Westerns would just have everyone with bandoliers of bullets and random revolvers, this production was true to the period and armed them with cap and ball revolvers. Reloading is shown repeatedly as the brothers disassemble their guns to slide a fresh cylinder into place.
It feels longer than its 2-hour runtime. At times, the filmmakers add scenes that further detail the time and place, but don't advance the story. What is the point of staying at the fine hotel and seeing a flush toilet. That's probably a bit early for a flush toilet. Then there were all the discarded items on the beach. In fact, during the Gold Rush, lots of items were abandoned on the trail. However, this is not explained and one might think this was just evidence of a shipwreck. It was also surprising to see Rutger Hauer appear in a non-speaking role.
With such a ludicrous title, I had expected some humor. Nope. Very few laughs to be found here. Just okay.
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