There are so few African Americans portrayed in movies about the West, Blazing Saddles mocked it 50 years ago. But 50 years on, Jeymes Samuel enters the picture, and up and creates a Western consisting of almost only African Americans. The Harder They Fall injects black style and culture into a traditional Western tale, merging the old and the new into something wholly unique and satisfying.
Set sometime in the Old West, the movie revolves around two rival gangs. Rufus Buck’s (Idris Elba) gang are your standard train robbing freedom loving fear mongering group. Diametrically opposed, Nat Love’s (Jonathan Majors) gang is the Omar Little of this time, robbing the robbers and naturally coming into contact with Buck’s gang. After Buck’s inner circle Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield) and Trudy Smith (Regina King) spring Buck from prison, Love gathers Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), and Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), his team, and descends upon Redwood, Buck’s hometown.
Samuel’s template is one you’ll recognize instantly: the Western revenge tale. The stakes are clear within the first 10 minutes, and the story goes exactly where you think it’s going to. There’s train and bank robberies, horseback riding across western landscapes, saloon galavanting, a small town shootout, a fastest gun in the West countdown. And one of my personal favorites: the slow head raise of our hero wearing a cowboy hat either smoking or chewing on something. Gets me every time. No need to modernize the main this story: it’s worked for decades, and it does the job again here, albeit more gorily violently.
The confident new style is what separates The Harder They Fall from Western relics of yesteryear. The dialogue is more modernized and jargonized, with way more cursing and way less racism, except a few funny jabs at Maysville the whitest city around. The soundtrack bangs with hip hop beats. Redwood is a gorgeous living set, with colors everywhere that are a feast for the eyeballs. While most of the story beats are as old as time, there’s some nice tweaks here and there that make the movie more interesting. The Beckwourth/Cherokee Bill rivalry has a nice edge to it, sort of inverting the power dynamics due to Beckwourth’s swagger. Cuffee, Stagecoach Mary, and Trudy Smith put multiple women in positions of power, balancing the normally overly macho story with some badass ladies at the center of the action. A lot of these stylish enhancements are simply due to the charm and charisma of a really talented cast. Standouts include Lakeith Stanfield’s fascinating sharpshooting but reluctant Cherokee Bill, RJ Cyler’s swashbuckling turn as hotshot Jim Beckwourth, and Danielle Deadwyler’s complicated but endlessly intriguing Cuffee. Idris Elba and Jonathan Majors ooze charm too, holding serve in the giant revenge tale built around their intertwined stories.
I guess Taylor Sheridan no longer has a monopoly over great modern Westerns. While technically The Harder They Fall is set in the past, it’s built to feel new and exciting, which it pulls off thanks to its talent in front of and behind the camera. In this case, the bigger they are, the harder they…dominate? Yep, that works.