Brim­stone

The tall, one-eyed preach­er in the long black coat strode slow­ly to the altar, the cold jan­gle of his spurs the only sound to be heard in the spar­tan chapel. His lean face is wind-chapped and weath­ered. He was hand­some once, but his fea­tures have long been hard­ened by the evil of men and the fury of his own belief. Sur­vey­ing the parish­ioners, he begins his ser­mon in a voice that is at once beguil­ing and unyield­ing. ​“Beware of false prophets…”

It’s impos­si­ble to know if the script for Mar­tin Koolhoven’s Brim­stone starts with those exact lines, but these things usu­al­ly do. It’s a badass open­ing that works for every­thing from Delta blues songs and loopy Man­ga comics to hum­drum video games. And while it may be a lit­tle hack­neyed and sopho­moric, it sets the board out nice­ly and allows for some blus­tery mono­logu­ing. It’s a scene that’s fun to write and to watch, as well as being cat­nip for prop-gnaw­ing actor-types.

The trou­ble is, when the ser­mon is over and the church doors open, scenes like these cease to write them­selves and the heavy loads of plot, moti­va­tion, struc­ture, char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and world-build­ing are added to the saddle-bags.

The film doesn’t whol­ly buck­le under these demands, but nei­ther does it ever tru­ly steady itself enough to set off in an entire­ly con­sis­tent, dis­tinc­tive or cred­i­ble direc­tion. Its whop­ping 148 minute run­time feels less sug­ges­tive of grand ideas or epic scope than of the film­mak­ers’ hope that if they keep the cam­eras rolling, inspi­ra­tion will spring from behind a rock.

Guy Pearce is the preach­er who arrives into a town of black bon­nets, pale, insu­lar north­ern Euro­pean set­tlers, pig farms and fierce­ly-styled neck­beards. It soon becomes appar­ent that his bib­li­cal ire is specif­i­cal­ly direct­ed at Dako­ta Fan­ning (mute) and her adop­tive fam­i­ly (unre­mark­able, dis­pos­able). Fan­ning-Pearce, nat­u­ral­ly, have a long and tur­bu­lent his­to­ry that is recount­ed through a series of por­ten­tous­ly inter-titled chap­ters that unfold back through their vio­lent, God-both­ered relationship.

This back­ward-spool­ing struc­ture is noth­ing espe­cial­ly inno­v­a­tive (Pearce him­self has red-hot form in the genre in the shape of 2000’s Memen­to) but here it adds sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the plot­ting and gifts our cen­tral pair a mys­tique that they – ulti­mate­ly – do not deserve. Pearce is swift­ly revealed to be noth­ing more than a sex­u­al­ly-mad­dened reli­gious nut (who morphs from boil­ing-point puri­tan to omni­scient boogey­man at the drop of a broad-brimmed hat) and Fan­ning an inno­cent turned inge­nious sur­vivor who will do any­thing to escape the bloody ortho­doxy of her tor­men­tor. Does that make Brim­stone a Mil­ton­ian spin on fem­i­nist eman­ci­pa­tion, or just a slash­er movie with frock coats?

The road to hell is rather famous­ly paved with good inten­tions, and for all of Brimstone’s Promised Lands, Solomon­ic wis­dom, sac­ri­fi­cial lambs, Infer­nos and desert wan­der­ings, it is fun­da­men­tal­ly lit­tle more than a well dressed, hand­some­ly con­ceived theo-thriller with ideas – some of them decent, but all of them famil­iar – a lit­tle above the sta­tion of a crazed revenger. If you have a tiny gap in your rootin’-tootin’ Rolodex between Dead­wood and The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James, this will slot right in, nev­er to be used.