‘The Harder They Fall’ Updates the Western With Blistering Style

Alci Rengifo

The Western is very much alive, and Netflix’s “The Harder They Fall” is the most exhilarating proof yet that the genre is growing and thriving as the times change. Director Jeymes Samuel has made a visually exhilarating Black Western that pays homage to the classics while thundering along with its own innovations. The theme is revenge, of course, but in the subtext there’s so much rich commentary on history and America. At the same time, don’t overthink too much when sitting down to enjoy this film. First and foremost, it is one of the year’s great cinematic aesthetic pleasures. Samuel, an accomplished UK musician, paints on a broad canvas where classic Western vistas collide with a soundtrack brimming with hip-hop, gospel, blues, R&B, country and more.

Like all good revenge sagas, this one begins with the act that sets hatred in motion. A man and his wife are slaughtered by a roaming outlaw, Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), who carves a cross on the forehead of their surviving young child. That child grows up to become Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), now a major bank robber himself, wanted by the authorities far and wide. He leads a gang of fellow gunslingers that includes the no-nonsense Mary “Stagecoach Mary” Fields (Zazie Beetz), who may still harbor passionate feelings for Nate, Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), a gender-defying quick shot, Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), a self-confident show off, and Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), the essential level-headed sniper. Then, a marshal from the past arrives, Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo), informing Nat that not only is Rufus Buck on the loose, he’s even been pardoned. Under the guise of arresting Nat, Reeves offers him a chance to finally get Buck, who is returning with his own “Red Hood” gang to Redwood City, the town he built and will now run once more.

James’s take on the Western has that unique combination of artistic freedom and grand tradition that has always marked the best ones. A musician famous for making short films along with song releases, James doesn’t make the predictable move of filming “The Harder They Fall” as some kind of glossy western with the look of a music video. With cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. he opens the film as it should, with widescreen images of vast plains and riders on horseback. The shootouts are bloody and visceral, with slow motion shots that seem inspired by Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch.” But then the opening credits blaze by to “Guns Go Bang” by Kid Cudi and Jay-Z. Along with tracks by artists like Seal and CeeLo Green, Samuel also composed the score, which has flourishes winking at all those classic western melodies by composers like Ennio Morricone. It’s not just stylistic indulgence. The Western is the ultimate American romantic epic, like what Homer is to Greek culture. As a filmmaker, Samuel is bridging Black American identity further with a film genre that tended to exclude the Black community for a long time, at least in its big, mainstream titles. There’s no room for John Wayne in this film, even if Samuel has obviously studied John Ford. There have been worthy attempts before, like Mario Van Peebles’ “Posse,” but few have reached what is achieved here. 

As a pure Western story the screenplay by Samuels and Boaz Yakin is a red-blooded parable full of great characters. Idris Alba’s Buck is a giant of a villain, like the Judge in Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Blood Meridian.” In his silent stares he instills fear. He quotes Napoleon to Nat but can just as easily break the gold teeth of former friend turned traitor Wiley Escoe (Deon Cole). When we first see him his gang, led by the intimidating Trudy Smith (Regina King), raid a U.S. Calvary train to break their leader out. Buck’s emergence from an iron cell is one of the year’s best reveals. His acolytes are the perfect posse. Trudy is joined by Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), who is more of a melancholic, ice-cold gunslinger. They may be the “villains,” but Samuel’s approach gives them a stronger complexity. Buck runs Redwood City with an iron fist and levees a new tax, but only because the U.S. has approved settlements for the territory, which means ravenous white colonists will soon be pouring in. Trudy will shoot down any opposition to their plans, but it’s more out of a violent ideal of what it will take to survive. King and Elba bring real pathos to their roles.

“The Harder They Fall” belongs to another particular category of Westerns which are almost dreamlike experiences. It has plenty of grit, but also the surreal spirit of films like “El Topo” and “The Proposition.” Costumes and sets are designed with colors that pop, the camera is always alive and there are hallucinatory moments like a tracking shot into a saloon where a woman in blue dances to “Wednesday’s Child” by Alice Smith. Samuel uses visual inventiveness for moments of wicked satire, like a town where everyone is white and even the buildings are all, indeed, white. The violence can get extreme, but with dark humor as well. Samuel feverishly mixes these elements with some fierce storytelling where love is declared on a starry night and who think will be spared gets a bullet through the cheek. Nat and Buck’s great standoff becomes as climactic as great opera.

In a year where superheroes and super spies have returned to the big screen after last year’s pandemic-induced drought, it’s refreshing to see Netflix champion a large film of this type. Viewers will be able to enjoy it at home when it streams, but Samuel’s images, like those of past greats like Sergio Leone, deserve to be absorbed on a large screen. Elba in particular delivers a performance worthy of such a canvas. He’s a perfect fit for this setting, as proven earlier this year in another Netflix western, the contemporary “Concrete Cowboys.” Jonathan Majors, who recently gained notability in HBO’s “Lovecraft Country,” is a strong, sympathetic lead. He has the chisel of a Western hero who can switch from romantic to hard-edged. Regina King might just be the most ruthless of the whole cast, eating the scenery with malevolent confidence. “The Harder They Fall” announces that a modern Western can now update the genre for a more conscious era, where everyone’s story will be told, but it’s also infused with everything that keeps this kind of adventure timeless.

“The Harder They Fall” releases Oct. 22 in select theaters and begins streaming Nov. 3 on Netflix.