A genre picture that will hold your interest

Jacques Audiard's English-language debut, The Sisters Brothers (2018) is an American movie of the most traditional kind - a Western involving gunslingers, brothers at odds w/ each other, a manhunt, a strange alliance between the hunter and the prey, treks on horseback across the rugged Western plains and passes, a Gold Rush element, bar fights, prostitutes with kind hearts, many shootouts, wildlife attacks - in short, everything that over the past 80 years have drawn French viewers and filmmakers to American cinema. There's no groundbreaking element to this film (although there's a bit of twist involving a chemist who claims to have a formula that will revolutionize panning for gold) but to his credit Audiard traverses the familiar ground with ease and confidence. A strong cast of lead characters - particularly the ever-present John C. Reilly in a career role - carry this story (from a novel by Patrick DeWitt) along briskly; the lead characters are (for once) clearly delineated, making it easy to follow the narrative line, there's plenty of tension, and a few really ghastly scenes not for the faint of heart. I wonder why the set-up - gunslinger brothers who argue about language and syntax - gets dropped somewhere in the middle of the film, and I quibble with the ending, which seems to me to wrap things up too easily and to leave threads dangling, but overall this is an entertaining genre piece that should hold your interest - more than I can say for most 2-hour (the current requisite minimum for films w/ prize ambitions) movies.