The Hard­er They Fall – first-look review

While the events of Jeymes Samuel’s debut fea­ture The Hard­er They Fall are fic­tion­al, the film opens with the dec­la­ra­tion: ​‘These. Peo­ple. Exist­ed.’ Blend­ing real-life Black out­laws with a sparky revenge tale, Samuel has cre­at­ed a rapid-fire rein­ven­tion of wild west screen lore.

As a gun­slinger who wiles away the day tar­get­ing bank rob­bers, Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) learns that his ene­my Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) – aka the man who mur­dered his par­ents in appar­ent cold blood – is due to be sprung from prison. This news sends him on a quest for vengeance, round­ing up a fear­some gang and form­ing an unlike­ly part­ner­ship in Bass Reeves (Del­roy Lin­do), a mar­shal also hunt­ing Buck.

Across town, anoth­er for­mi­da­ble gang is reunit­ed as Buck’s loy­al com­pan­ions, includ­ing Chero­kee Bill (LaKei­th Stan­field) and ​‘Treach­er­ous’ Trudy Smith (Regi­na King), pull off an impres­sive train heist to free their incar­cer­at­ed leader, before seek­ing to regain both mon­ey and pow­er. Thus two teams assem­ble ready for an inevitable bul­let-filled smackdown.

From its blood-spat­tered out­set, The Hard­er They Fall estab­lish­es itself as a stylised west­ern with ele­ments of tech­nique and iron­ic ges­tures that are sure to draw com­par­isons to Quentin Taran­ti­no. Yet Samuel’s own back­ground and moti­va­tions bring some­thing dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent to this feature.

Lon­don-born and known for his work as a song­writer and music pro­duc­er under his stage name The Bul­litts, Samuel serves not only as the direc­tor and co-writer (along with Boaz Yakin) but also as com­pos­er. Far away from the famil­iar tra­di­tions of coun­try and Amer­i­can folk music, Samuel’s sound­track selec­tions charges his West­ern with tri­umphant anthems span­ning hip hop, reg­gae and afrobeat. This is slick­ly mar­ried with strik­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy that spoils us with rolling land­scapes, cool fig­ures on horse­back and exhil­a­rat­ing action pieces.

Even with the preva­lence of Black cow­boys across the Amer­i­can West in the 1800s, they have been large­ly erased from pop­u­lar cul­ture. Endur­ing mem­o­ries of the west­ern film genre con­jure images of John Wayne and Clint East­wood – much more in line with the ​‘all-Amer­i­can’ ide­al (vio­lent ban­dits or not) bestowed onto cowboys.

Sto­ries of Black cow­boys have slow­ly start­ed to bleed into the main­stream in recent years, with Idris Elba already por­tray­ing one in Con­crete Cow­boy, anoth­er Net­flix release from ear­li­er this year. The Hard­er They Fall presents the bold­est depic­tion yet of this milieu, refram­ing cow­boy mythol­o­gy by pro­vid­ing all the enjoy­ment of a typ­i­cal revenge epic while always feel­ing like an inher­ent­ly Black work to its core.

There are moments dur­ing the sec­ond act where the pac­ing sags and the on/​off romance between Nat and Zazie Beetz’s Stage­coach Mary feels a lit­tle under­writ­ten. These short­com­ings are eas­i­ly for­giv­en, how­ev­er, with the sheer fun of drink­ing in the big per­for­mances from King and Majors, in par­tic­u­lar. The Hard­er They Fall is a thrilling fea­ture debut from Jeymes Samuels, redefin­ing the movie west­ern for a mod­ern age. These. Peo­ple. Exist­ed. And we want more.