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The Sisters Brothers is a unique little Western from Jacques Audiard that is, more than anything else, deeply sensitive. Admittedly, it’s full of killing, extortion, drunkenness, madness and one particularly grizzly amputation, but as any fan of the genre will tell you, that’s just how the West is. 

At the movie’s heart are four male relationships, brought to life by a quartet of excellent performances from John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal, struggling to find ways of cultivating a small supply of trust in the mistrustful hotbed of the West. Reilly and Phoenix are the titular brothers. They’re a striking pair: Phoenix an unhinged, emotional alcoholic, desperately aware that he is treading in the boot prints of his abusive father, Reilly a gentle soul who loves his brother and rests his head each night on a shawl given to him by a school teacher he dreams of settling down with back home. They’re guns for hire, tracking down a gold prospector and his erudite accomplice, played by Ahmed and Gyllenhaal respectively, who seem to have found a chemical compound that reveals the location of gold in a riverbed. The four men eventually meet and, though hostile initially towards each other, they develop a unique and beautiful set of relationships, each revealing a little of themselves to one another as they spend time chasing their fortune.

The acting is what carries the picture; it’s excellent throughout. It’s particularly nice to see Ahmed in a really unique role doing fine work alongside some of Hollywood’s greats. Phoenix occasionally misses the mark in the most challenging of the four roles, and we never quite understand his character, though I suspect that is in part deliberate. There are a few distractingly gross scenes which aren’t necessary and aren’t all that visually interesting, but the unique and soulful relationships coupled with an ending which is so cosy that you can’t help but bask in it make the film really enjoyable, not to mention surprisingly funny, in a sad sort of way. I’d like to see more genre films take the risks with character that this does, viewing with such sympathy the flaws of its protagonists. A disarmingly thoughtful Western with some terrific acting, less interested in saloon shoot ups than heartfelt expressions of male bonding.

EveryFilmIWatch is multi-channel film review project run by Sebastian Cox, ScriptUp co-founder. Further reviews can be found on Instagram.