Synopsis
Retribution is coming.
In the menacing inferno of the old North-American West, Liz is a genuine survivor who is hunted by a vengeful preacher for a crime she didn’t commit.
Directed by Martin Koolhoven
In the menacing inferno of the old North-American West, Liz is a genuine survivor who is hunted by a vengeful preacher for a crime she didn’t commit.
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This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Technically, spoilers follow, but they shouldn't really matter (because the film is bad)
A cartoon depiction of misogyny that delights in seeing women whipped, beaten, raped and maimed under the pretence that this will make the pseudo-feminist uplift in its closing moments more genuine. Brimstone aspires to be some kind of serious, important epic, and yet without any kind of substance it falls back on empty pretensions: heavy-handed, nonsensical and often laughable religious symbolism, including "chapters" named after books of the bible; meaninglessly shocking violence (a man is disembowelled and has his entrails wrapped around his neck for no discernible reason); an overwrought orchestral score; and sweeping Western landscapes actually filmed in Europe (a highlight, admittedly, but perhaps the only…
"Mama, are you evil?" -little girl,
Or... just don't speak.
There is stuff to like in here... the film looks good and the performances are quite eerie and engaging. There may even be a version of this story that is more tastefully done, that gets across the point(?) of the movie a little bit better. The story has good bones to it and I think telling the story out of order worked quite well in this case. That all considered this is not my thing.
It's just too much. There is a fine line between making a statement and pure exploitation and this one kind of crosses it for me. I don't even mind a good exploitation film occasionally if…
Can't believe this movie gets so many bad reviews.. if tarantino directed this it would get double the percentage on rotten tomatoes
Well..... that was fun. Seriously though how did this film even get made? There is some pretty fucked up shit in this and its 148 minutes long and has almost zero commercial appeal, plus it looks like it cost a bit to make. Yet for it's long running time I was never at all bored and I felt it moved at a smooth pace. It's an underseen film that I could definitely see getting somewhat of a cult following like Red Hill although they are very different westerns. Oh and Guy Pearce is underrated in just about everything.
Reverent and ridiculous in equal measure, Martin Koolhoven’s “Brimstone” is a wild pseudo-Western that trembles beneath the biblical weight of its comically grim story. Told with a steady tone that marries the divine retribution of the Old Testament with the heightened slickness of a graphic novel, this gruesome carnival of debasement may be set in the lawless frontiers of 19th century America, but it might be more accurately located somewhere between Sodom and Gomorrah and “Sin City.” It’s the kind of movie in which an actor from “Game of Thrones” murders someone who’s taking a shit in an outhouse — the kind of movie in which a dying man, choking on a noose made out of his own intestines, still…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
would've been a 7 if characters didn't die (and survive) in horrendously stupid ways
This controversial western is fucking brutal and holds nothing back as Guy Pearce plays a satan terminator in the old west, a horrendously vile entity. Brutal whipping, child rape, someone gutted with their intestines wrapped around their neck, pedophilia, hangings, tongue cutting and rape... yeah... it’s a hard watch with a shitload of disturbing atrocity scenarios. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this. Not really for me.
First things first, Brimstone is batshit crazy. I mean, seriously - there is no possible way to anticipate the events that unfold just by reading the vague synopsis. I really haven't experienced a story this dark and disturbing in a while, but fortunately for me, it's my kind of crazy. Guy Pearce gives one of the most sinister performances in recent memory and Dakota Fanning excels in using her striking features, eyes in particular, to maximum effect. Told non-chronologically in four chapters (titled Revelation, Exodus, Genesis, and Retribution), Brimstone is a deviant film with deviant characters that spits on the typical three-act structure and is sure to polarize anyone willing to give it a go. Thankfully, I ended up on the side that really enjoyed it. So far, Brimstone is one of my favorite films of 2017. Highly recommended - especially if you're in the mood for something visually stunning, thematically distasteful, and refreshingly different!
tries a little to hard to be something between the next big thing and The Proposition, a bulkily orchestrated heavy-hander and a grim and muddy neo-western. the tone is too serious to being able to enhance a proper cynicism, the biblical violence overshadows other elements. this wants to be an epic but is more like an oversized pathos porridge.
genuinely one of the worst films I’ve ever watched. trauma porn from a director who clearly hates women. Dakota fanning baby girl we need to get you away from these awful horror scripts
"I could tell you about Hell. About its flames. About the pain. I'm sure you people have tried to imagine what it's like. It's worse".
It's this quote which pretty much sums up Brimstone as a total experience. From the start it's clear we're not quite going to have some fun in this film.
Evil arises from the depths of religious depravity, scorching a deathly path of fire through a cursed and mortal landscape, covered by a hideous fog of eternal doom. A demon stands up with it, or maybe Lord Satan himself, in the shape of the reverend, a force of pure, unstoppable rage, unleashing a hell of nightmarish violence in the life of Dakota Fanning's mute Liz. As…
“People think it’s the flames that make Hell unbearable. It’s not. It’s the absence of love.”
Brimstone is dark, disturbing, violent, methodical and bad to the F’N bone! It’s one of the most unique entires into the western genre ever and its twisted imagery guarantees that it will stay with me for a long long time.
The performances are great especially from Dakota Fanning and Guy Pearce who is absolutely diabolical. Kit Harrington also puts in a solid performance and makes me think he’d be perfect for a live action John Marston.
The cinematography is bleak and pale and it sets the mood perfectly.
Overall, while I do think it is a little too long, Brimstone is a solid western, but it’s not for the faint of heart.