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"The Harder They Fall" is a bloody pleasure: a revenge Western packed with memorable characters played by memorable actors, each scene and moment staged for voluptuous beauty and kinetic power. Jeymes Samuel , who cowrote, directed, and scored the movie, has not just studied the works of the directors he emulates, but understands what they were doing with image and sound, and  feels  it, surely in the way that he feels the craft involved in music he performs and produces under his stage name The Bullitts. It's a pity that this Netflix film will likely be seen mainly on handheld devices, laptops, and iPads, because (like other late-2021 releases, such as " The French Dispatch " and "Dune") it was plainly conceived with a movie house in mind. Samuel uses a very wide screen to frame shots that employ a lot of negative space and contain layers of information you have to focus on to appreciate, and gifts his actors with precious moments where their characters are allowed to listen to each other, silently glance at each other, and ponder their next move, often while enduring death-stares from enemies armed to the teeth.

Western history buffs should be warned, or at least notified, that while many of the major characters in the story share the same names as actual people who lived and died in the Old West, including Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Stagecoach Mary, Jim Beckwourth, and Cherokee Bill, the events they take part in are mostly made-up nonsense. They bear as much relation to reality as the events of a dreamscape Western like " The Good, the Bad and the Ugly ," "The Quick and the Dead," and " Posse " (to name just three Westerns this one cribs from) or a gangster movie like " Dillinger " and " The Untouchables ," the major events of which were so ludicrous that they might as well have been taking place on another planet, or in an alternate dimension. 

But this is a feature of the movie, not a bug. The entire project feels like a bit of a lark or an indulgence, until the point when it wipes the cocky grin off its face, embraces the melodramatic aspects of its central storyline, and becomes an earnest romance, a family tragedy, and a quasi-mythological story about how violence begets more violence, whether it's experienced in a saloon, on dusty streets, or in the privacy of a family home. (Three different characters in "The Harder They Fall" talk about their experiences with domestic abuse.)

Jonathan Majors , who came out of nowhere a few years ago to become one of the most reliable of leading men, stars as Nat Love, first depicted in flashback as a terrified child whose mother and father are murdered by the outlaw Rufus Buck ( Idris Elba ). As a parting gift, Buck draws his dagger and inscribes a crucifix into the boy's forehead. It marks the film's hero as meaningfully as the vertical sabre-scar on the Outlaw Josey Wales' face. As an adult, Nat becomes a feared gunslinger and outlaw, and finds himself embroiled in a combination adventure and revenge mission targeting the man who killed his parents. There are quick-draws, large-scale gunfights, horse stunts, and chases, a train robbery, bank robberies, and a couple of hand-to-hand brawls with fists, feet and makeshift weapons that are as good as any ever staged in a Western (with unabashedly modern fight choreography, though—like something out of a Bond or Bourne film). There are also musical numbers, and big sets painted in so many varied and vibrant hues and with so many modern touches that at times we seem to be touring an art installation on Western themes. A fight to the death between two characters in a barn is preceded by a walk through brightly dyed fabrics hanging on clotheslines; they look like those large-scale "wrapping" projects that Christo does on landscapes.

Samuel and his co-writer Boaz Yakin ("Remember the Titans," "Fresh") break the first section of the film into mirrored narratives, each dealing with one of the main criminal gangs: Nat's and Rufus'. At the start of the story proper, Rufus is doing federal prison time for bank robbery, but gets sprung by his right-hand woman Trudy ( Regina King , chewing up the screen as a sadistic, sneering baddie).

Trudy then leads Rufus' gang in a boarding action that takes over a U.S. Calvary-controlled train where Rufus is being held inside an iron vault as if he were a velociraptor (or Hannibal Lecter). It takes a rare actor to justify the buildup the director gives Rufus. The character's face is not seen in the opening sequence and doesn’t appear for 20 more minutes. When Trudy takes over the prison car and opens the vault door, the movie lets us search the darkness for a glimpse of him, like infantrymen with binoculars looking for Godzilla's dorsal fins in Tokyo Bay. Elba makes the wait worth it, imbuing his cynical, confident character with a free-floating sadness reminiscent of El Indio, the antagonist from " For a Few Dollars More " whose opium addiction numbed his awareness of his own monstrousness.

Unshackled at last, Rufus returns to the desert town he used to run, and finds his old partner Wiley Escoe ( Deon Cole , giving off Clarence Williams III vibes) lording it over the place as if he were the rightful owner. Rufus makes quick work of Wiley, but he doesn't kill him, and it's fun to watch the character come skulking through the film again at various junctures, wheedling and manipulating and double-crossing and doing whatever else he feels he needs to do to get ahead. Most, if not all of the characters have a similarly self-justifying code. Not for nothing do Samuel and costume designer Antoinette Messam outfit nearly every character in a black hat: it's not just a nod to the film's non-traditional casting, it's an acknowledgement that nearly every player in this story would be described as the antihero or villain if you made them the star of their own project. 

Samuel fills the screen with characters whose eccentricity, coolness, and layered psychology are conveyed with such economy that it's only when you look back on the picture that you realize that they only had a few minutes of the two-plus hour runtime to themselves. Although the film's sympathies are always with Nat, a traumatized boy imposing his manly will upon an unjust universe, for the most part it seems more invested in the idea that people are complicated and self-contradicting. And it portrays the jockeying of the two gangs over possession of assorted bank robbery hauls not as a battle between good and evil, but a competition between rival businesses trying to conquer the same market.

In addition to Elba, and King, Rufus's gang includes LaKeith Stanfield as Cherokee Bill, whose prolific kill record is undercut by rumors that he shoots his enemies in the back. Backing up Nat, we have Zazie Beetz as Stagecoach Mary, a gun-for-hire who used to be Nat's lover and still carries a torch for him; Danielle Deadwyler as Cuffee, a Calamity Jane-type tomboy gunfighter who presents as male; RJ Cyler as Beckwourth, a pistol-twirling showboat who's obsessed with killing Bill in a legitimate quick-draw contest; and rifleman Bill Pickett ( Edi Gathegi ), who, in the words of Morgan Freeman's character in " Unforgiven ," could hit a bird in the eye flyin.'

Rolling his eyes as the types of viewers that Alfred Hitchcock derided as The Plausibles, the filmmaker goes for an operatic dream/nightmare feeling, creating (like Leone before him) a parallel, alternative version of the American West in which pistol shots reverberate like cannon fire, and gunfights become so acrobatic as to seem like an extension of martial arts.

Racism, genocide, and imperial arrogance exist in this film's universe and impact the lives of nonwhite people (one Black character reveals a neck scar indicating that he survived a lynching) but not to such an extent that they can't own bars, nightclubs, and banks, run thriving towns, and roam the frontier with cocky confidence in armed groups (just as white gunslingers did) without having to fear persecution or annihilation at any moment. Samuels' film is escapist, then, in a different sense than one in which that word is usually employed. The movie creates a fictional space where viewers who have traditionally been excluded from a genre can revel in its pleasures.

If there's a downside, it's that Samuel sometimes gets so enamored with the presentation of violence (and the buildup to violence) that the characters turn into action figurines. And some of the storytelling choices can feel counter-intuitive or worse (Stagecoach Mary has to be a damsel in distress for a bit, and the film's coyly referring to her as a "damsel" doesn't make the choice feel any less retrograde). To be fair, though, this has sometimes been a problem in films that "The Harder They Fall" appears to be channelling as well.

But even the missteps here are counterbalanced by seemingly out-of-nowhere choices that make you laugh because of their audacity, then sigh at their rightness, such as the way that both Rufus and Nat often whistle or sing melodies that also appear in Samuel's score or songs, making the movie seem as if it's constantly on the brink of turning into a Western musical: imagine "Annie Get Your Gun" directed by Hype Williams. Some of the scenes between Mary and Nat, particularly early on when she's shown performing onstage, echo Nicolas Ray's surreal but earnest " Johnny Guitar ", a  David Lynch favorite, and another Western that creates its own universe that is mainly about the storyteller's affinities.

The movie succeeds as pure spectacle, turning light, color, and motion into sources of pleasure. In a time of increasingly slovenly action filmmaking, it's a relief to find yourself in the hands of a director who knows what to do with a camera. Samuel brings a musical performer's sensibility to the staging of big moments. He and cinematographers Mihai Mălaimare, Jr. and Sean Bobbitt change angles or shift focus to create laughs or gasps; hold on striking images to create self-contained objects of beauty (such as a sniper's eye-view of a target or an overhead view of gunmen with very long shadows confronting each other in a street), and cast the laws of nature aside to get the movie to do what it needs to do to produce a certain feeling. Notice how, in the final showdown, the sun is all over the place, and yet always where it needs to be to create an iconic Western image, suitable for framing.

It's an actor's showcase as well—and as compelling as the actors in flamboyant supporting roles are, it would be a shame if the subtle, grounding work of Majors and Elba went unappreciated, because it's hard to imagine how their performances could be better. Elba brings a world-weary, self-disgusted quality to Rufus that is so fascinating on its own terms that when we finally get the pieces of the puzzle that unlock the core of the character's personality, it feels like a diminishment.

And Majors captures that mix of fearlessness and self-deprecation that audiences used to love in Harrison Ford heroes. Nat is a badass who can kill six men before their pistols can clear their holsters, but this is not a vain or even particularly swaggering performance. Majors leans into instances of comic misunderstanding, romantic longing, overconfidence, and physical vulnerability that define Nat at key points in the tale. Rather than undermine the character, these moments only endear him to us.

This is one of those movies that might come on TV while you're supposed to be doing something else, and that you'll end up watching the rest of the way through, because it's so much fun.

On Netflix today.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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The Harder They Fall (2021)

Rated R for strong violence and language.

139 minutes

Jonathan Majors as Nat Love

Zazie Beetz as Stagecoach Mary

Idris Elba as Rufus Buck

Regina King as Trudy Smith

Delroy Lindo as Bass Reeves

LaKeith Stanfield as Cherokee Bill

Danielle Deadwyler

Edi Gathegi as Bill Pickett

Deon Cole as Wiley Escoe

Julio Cedillo

Woody McClain

RJ Cyler as Jim Beckwourth

Damon Wayans, Jr.

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine

• Jeymes Samuel

Writer (story by)

Cinematographer.

• Mihai Malaimare Jr.

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‘The Harder They Fall’ Review: A New Look for the Old West

Jeymes Samuel’s film is a bloody horse opera with a charismatic cast.

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By A.O. Scott

A note at the beginning of “The Harder They Fall” asserts that while the story is fictional, “These. People. Existed.” This isn’t about historical accuracy, or even realism; it’s about genre. The movie, directed by Jeymes Samuel (from a screenplay he wrote with Boaz Yakin), is a high-style pop Western, with geysers of blood, winks of nasty, knowing humor and an eclectic, joyfully anachronistic soundtrack featuring cuts from Jay-Z, Fela Kuti and Nina Simone alongside Samuel’s original score.

The point is that the vivid assortment of gunslingers, chanteuses, saloonkeepers and train-robbers — all of them Black — who ride through picturesque mountain ranges and frontier towns have as authentic a claim on the mythology of the West as their white counterparts. They exist, in other words, as true archetypes in a primal story of revenge, greed, treachery and courage.

Especially revenge. The story begins with a family’s Sunday dinner interrupted by slaughter. Some years later, the young boy whose parents were gunned down in front of him has grown up into an outlaw named Nat Love, played with abundant charm by Jonathan Majors. Nat’s gang — whose most valuable players are a sharpshooter (Edi Gathegi) and a quick-draw specialist (RJ Cyler) — specializes in stealing from other outlaw bands. But that’s just business. The personal concerns that propel Nate and the plot are his love for Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz) and his vendetta against Rufus Buck (Idris Elba).

Mary is a singer and entrepreneur with impressive fighting skills. Rufus resembles a villain out of fantasy or science fiction — a nearly superhuman avatar of evil with grandiose ambitions and a grudge against the universe. And also the charisma of Elba, unmatched at playing bad guys with a touch of sadness to them. Rufus’s crew is a mirror-image of Nate’s, though his empire is more extensive. His sharpshooter, Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield), is a philosophical sociopath, and his main lieutenant is a ruthless killer named Trudy Smith.

Speaking of charisma: Regina King ! From her first appearance — on horseback, in a blazing blue coat with gold buttons to match her stirrups — Trudy spikes the magnetometer, but King is in good company. Just look at the names in the preceding paragraphs. Add Delroy Lindo as a dour U.S. Marshal with complicated allegiances and Danielle Deadwyler as Mary’s pint-size bouncer, who joins up with Nate’s gang and steals a dozen scenes as well as $35,000 from a white-owned bank.

Samuel makes the most of his formidable cast. If anything, he may be overgenerous. The narrative sometimes flags so that everyone can get in a few volleys of the salty, pungent dialogue on the way to the next round of gunplay or fisticuffs. There are imaginative and suspenseful set pieces — Trudy peeling an apple while she tells the captive Mary a story; a bank robbery in a town so white that even the dust on Main Street looks bleached — and plenty of more conventional episodes of shooting and punching.

“The Harder They Fall,” nodding to the traditions of blaxploitation and spaghetti westerns in the Netflix era, opts for sprawl and impact — the eye-popping cinematography is by Mihai Malaimare Jr. — over restraint and coherence. That’s not such a bad thing, though the story sometimes feels glib as well as messy. A late-breaking revelation that is meant to raise the dramatic and emotional stakes has the opposite effect, and the violence walks the line between stylization and sadism. The bodies pile up at the end, but there are enough people still existing to tease a sequel. No complaints here. That’s part of how the West was won.

The Harder They Fall Rated R. Killing and cursing. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Idris elba and jonathan majors in ‘the harder they fall’: film review | bfi london 2021.

Writer-director-producer-composer Jeymes Samuel, aka The Bullitts, also assembles LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz and Delroy Lindo for a Western saturated in style.

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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Netflix drama The Harder They Fall represents rambunctious, swaggering action-adventure set in the Old West but given something of a hip and happening look and feel thanks to a focus on Black characters inspired by historical figures, stylish craft contributions and inspired needle drops. It’s a solid effort from British singer-songwriter-producer Jeymes Samuel , also known as The Bullitts, and now a film industry multihyphenate.

Thankfully, it’s also a considerable improvement on his previous directorial effort, 2013’s They Die by Dawn , a somewhat stilted 50-minute work that revolved around many of the same characters but with a different roster of actors. With the likes of Jonathan Majors , Idris Elba , Regina King , Zazie Beetz , Delroy Lindo and LaKeith Stanfield in this cast, the film should generate substantially more buzz, and may gain traction as an awards contender so long as voters don’t dismiss it as too “genre” for serious consideration.

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Venue: BFI London Film Festival (Opening Night Gala)

Cast: Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo

Director: Jeymes Samuel

Screenwriters: Jeymes Samuel, Boaz Yakin

Well in advance of its official premiere as the opening film for the BFI London Film Festival (it was also simultaneously broadcast in cinemas around the U.K.), The Harder They Fall piqued press interest enough to spawn articles about the real historical figures depicted in the film and broader pieces about the history of Black Westerns . But while it’s clear from the film that Samuel and his co-screenwriter and Hollywood script-puncher-upper-for-hire Boaz Yakin ( Fresh , Now You See Me ) are well versed in the cinematic traditions of Westerns, especially when it comes to the ways one can shoot gunfights, bank heists and train robberies, they’re not precious about historical accuracy.

Most of the film’s main characters — Rufus Buck (Elba), Nat Love (Majors), “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (King), “Stagecoach” Mary Fields (Beetz), “Cherokee” Bill (Stanfield) and Bass Reeves (Lindo) — were real living, breathing historical figures, but they lived in various times during the 19th century and most likely never met one another. Or, as an opening chyron puts it: “While the events of this story are fictional … These. People. Existed.” That percussive punctuation for emphasis augurs that the film will flirt a lot with anachronism and pop culture patois alike, winking to younger viewers. It’s a surprise they didn’t throw in the hand-clapping emoji (👏) after each full stop for good measure.

This jazz improvisational-style mashup of fact, legend and screenwriters’ whim starts with a traumatic act of murder, as unsettling as it is inexplicable. A family — father, mother and a young boy — settle down in their frontier homestead to enjoy a meal when in walks a sinister figure, seen only from behind but instantly recognizable to fans of The Wire , Marvel movies and promos for Sky TV in the U.K. as Idris Elba. The father begs the mysterious visitor to spare the lives of his wife and son, but the unwanted guest kills both the father and the mother. Lastly, while an accomplice with a distinctive tattoo holds the boy still, the visitor cuts a cross into his forehead.

Flash-forward to the film’s present day, sometime in the late 1800s, and the scarred little boy has grown up to be Nat Love, an outlaw and boss of the Nat Love gang who preys on other outlaws, not unlike Omar in The Wire . (As it happens, the late, great Michael K. Williams, who played Omar, also played Love in Samuel’s They Die by Dawn , and the film is dedicated to him as well as to British entertainment lawyer Richard Antwi in the end credits). Above all, Love is determined to track down the men who killed his parents, and after eliminating the tattooed figure early on, there’s only notorious armed robber Buck left to hunt down and kill.

Thereafter, the film basically switches back and forth between the two gangs as we are incrementally introduced to the other rootin’, tootin’ miscreants in varying shades of ruthless that make up each gang. On Team Rufus, there’s Buck’s right-hand woman, Trudy, apparently his romantic partner but, more significantly for the purposes of the film, a tough-as-rusty-nails lieutenant. Also reporting to Buck is Cherokee Bill, a laconic sharpshooter.

Love’s posse mirrors Buck’s in terms of prowess but has a slightly more diverse hiring policy given that two members are women, or at least one of them identifies as female — sultry saloonista Stagecoach Mary, who is also Nat’s main squeeze. The other, Cuffy (a delightful turn by Danielle Deadwyler), with her cross-dressing proclivities, is more ambiguous in terms of gender identity. There is no ambiguity, however, about Cuffy’s pugilistic skills and speed with a gun, which is why she manages the door at Mary’s saloon.

Once Love and his cohort get word that Buck is in Redwood City (a town apparently in Texas or Oklahoma, not California’s Bay Area; also, there is a distinct lack of redwood trees in the township), they move ever closer to the final showdown. Other outlaws who Love and Co. bring along or pick up on the way include Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), James Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), and eventually federal marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo, a little underused) — again, all of them based on historical figures.

Some viewers, particularly viewers of color — and it’s not for me, a white woman, to take this one on — may have issues with the fact that Samuel has taken all these interesting figures from history and used them just as names, creating a story around them that’s pretty distant from the actual recorded facts about the actual people. Apparently, for instance, Nat Love was no outlaw but a professional cowboy, born in slavery but once freed able to make a name for himself in the West thanks to his talent with horses, which helped him win competitions and gain fame. He went on to write an autobiography.

That story might have merited a film on its own, especially if it starred as talented cast as this film has. Instead, perhaps believing in all good faith that the best way to get people interested in Black history and to pay tribute to some of the Black people who were part of the Wild West and have been neglected by conventional accounts is to wildly distort the facts. By bending and buckling Love’s and Buck’s and all the rest of these folks’ stories, Samuel and his team have made something arguably a little less interesting, a classic revenge narrative in the tradition of True Grit (either version), The Great Silence (1968), New Jack City (1991) or Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus .

Or, if you will, this is film that becomes a weapon of fantasy revenge itself by appropriating history, in the same vein as Quentin Tarantino’s counterfactual works Django Unchained , Inglourious Basterds (one of whose producers, Lawrence Bender, is also a producer on Harder ) or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood . But that is an issue for cultural critics to explore, along with the way the film barely even discusses race in itself (all the white characters are totally marginal), and the ethics of celebrating gun violence as spectacle, especially Black-on-Black gun violence.

Take all that heavy stuff out of the equation, and this stands up as just an uproariously fun hootenanny, made with style. The music alone is worth the price of admission, or month’s worth of subscription. An early highlight is a banger, in every sense, titled “Guns Go Bang,” performed by Jay-Z (also a producer here under his other name, Shawn Carter) and Kid Cudi, who shares a writing credit with Samuel. The helmer wrote the score, among his many other duties here, and takes sole writing credit on several of the tracks. In addition, there are a number of exquisitely well-chosen cuts from older artists, including lots of reggae and deep dub by artists such as Barrington Levy and Dennis Brown that will please old-school roots fans who might tune into this expecting a sequel to the classic 1972 Jamaican film The Harder They Come, which starred reggae crooner Jimmy Cliff.

Kudos too to editor Tom Eagles, who cuts with razor precision in sync with the music, especially in the climactic showdown, filmed in a punchy, saturated palette delivered up by DP Mihai Malaimare, production designer Martin Whist and costumer designer Antoinette Messam. (Craft fans will delight in the final girl-fight bout between Beetz’s Mary and King’s Trudy, which takes place in a dye works where bolts of cloth, skeins of yarn and vats of powdered pigment add a riot of color to the proceedings.)

The cast has chemistry in all directions, between the romantic matchups but just as much among the menfolk as they bicker, bond and berate one another. In what may be a sly, tongue-in-cheek joke, the final big-boss fight between Love and Buck becomes a competition less about aim and ballistics than about who can cry more convincingly for the camera about his character’s ruined childhood. A tear-down? A cry fight? Cinema hasn’t yet got a term for what the two actors are doing here, but we’re here for it.

Full credits

Venue: BFI London Film Festival (Opening Night Gala) Cast: Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, RJ Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole Distributor: Netflix Production companies: Netflix Director: Jeymes Samuel Screenwriters: Jeymes Samuel, Boaz Yakin Producers: James Lassite, Lawrence Bender, Jeymes Samuel, Shawn Carter Executive producers: G. Mac Brown Director of photography: Mihai Malaimare Production designer: Martin Whist Costume designer: Antoinette Messam Editor: Tom Eagles Sound designer: Richard King Music: Jeymes Samuel Music supervisor: Michelle Silverman Casting: Victoria Thomas

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‘The Harder They Fall’ Review: Jeymes Samuel Dusts Off a Dying Genre

The musician-turned-director assembles a terrific cast to play some of the most notorious (yet under-portrayed) outlaws ever to ride the West in this stylish revenge saga.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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There’s a cruel irony working against Hollywood’s efforts to diversify: For nearly a century, the industry depicted the world as a place dominated by white, straight, able-bodied men. The movies typically relegated women and people of color to supporting and subservient roles, while excluding (or else vilifying) queer and handicapped characters. As a result, entire generations have been raised on lopsided and inaccurate representations of our past — that Jesus was white, for example — to the extent that they don’t necessarily believe it when Black actors appear in situations where they played a significant (off-screen) role. Like the American West.

Well, as Jeymes Samuel ’s stylish outlaw revenge saga “ The Harder They Fall ” insists from the outset, “These. People. Existed.” — white letters punched through a black screen like someone blasted it with shotgun pellets. The movie, which kicked off the BFI London Film Festival with a bang, isn’t some fantasy Western full of made-up characters (not that there’s anything wrong with that, as gonzo oaters like South Korea’s “The Good the Bad the Weird” have demonstrated) but an all-star assembly of real-life Black cowboys, including Nat Love ( Jonathan Majors ), Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beets) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield).

Perhaps midway through a movie in which the Civil War is over, slavery has ended and all the leading roles are played by Black actors, Nat and his gang ride into a town of rich, terrified-looking white folks. The town has literally been whitewashed: Every plank, sign and stoop has been painted white, so conspicuously that audiences ought to find themselves noticing just how artificial it all looks — something that may never have occurred to them when watching a Western in which no Black actors appear.

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After robbing the bank, Nat and company return to Redwood City, a frontier town bursting with color — which is also no accident. (New Mexico’s Cerro Pelon Movie Ranch stands in for most locations.) Everyone here is Black, and the notion of “good guys” and “bad guys” isn’t so clear, since they’re basically all wanted men. And women. Everyone fears bandit Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), also a real person, albeit liberally fictionalized here. But three of the film’s most compelling characters wear dresses, at least some of the time: Mary, her gender-defying right-hand “man” Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler) and “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King), who rides with Rufus.

In the opening scene, Rufus bangs on the door of a frontier cabin, shoots the family and carves a cross into the forehead of young Nat. “Some time later” in Texas, Nat has grown up into “Lovecraft Country” star Majors, who’s got one of those faces that holds the camera, whether it’s seen from afar on horseback or staring directly into the lens in a Sergio Leone-style extreme close-up.

Nat has spent the better part of his life tracking down and taking revenge on the men who raided his home all those years ago. The only one who remains is Rufus Buck himself, safely behind bars — but not for long. In the film’s most effective set-piece, Rufus’ posse stop a train and bust him out of a heavy iron vault. Then they gun down all the white soldiers hired to transport him, but not without cause.

A singer with an interest in and aptitude for directing, Samuel is no stranger to the genre, having helmed the striking 2013 Western “They Die by Dawn,” an impressive, medium-length showcase featuring the late Michael Kenneth Williams as Nat Love and Erykah Badu as Stagecoach Mary. Though plenty accomplished, that project was like a practice run for “The Harder They Fall,” which focuses on the score that needs settling between Nat and Rufus. It’s a personal matter, and Rufus had his reasons, we learn. As one character puts it, “I’ve seen the Devil, and Rufus Buck ain’t him. The Devil’s white.”

While the film doesn’t feel overtly political, through sheer power of representation, it’s shaking up the very restrictive codes of — and finding fresh life in — a genre that carbon-copied itself into oblivion via mid-’50s TV series like “Gunsmoke” and “Rawhide.” Samuel isn’t inventing anything here by shifting the attention to nonwhite antiheroes. Oscar Micheaux was making Black Westerns a century ago, and the big screen saw notable examples via Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in “Buck and the Preacher” and Mario Van Peebles’ “Posse.” Still, the perception remains that the West was colonized by white cowboys facing off against black-hat villains (also white), while ridding the territory of Indians.

As much fun as Majors, Elba, Beetz and King are to watch in roles that allow for plenty of scenery chewing (and oh what scenery!), it’s Stanfield who steals the show here as the part-Indian, part-Black Cherokee Bill. So memorably laconic elsewhere, the actor stretches to create a charismatic character (Deadwyler’s Cuffee comes a close second), chewing on his cheroot and drawling speeches that would be right at home in “Django Unchained” or “The Hateful Eight.”

Samuel’s two biggest influences seem to be Leone and Tarantino, which makes for a very style-forward presentation, sometimes at the expense of a clean, straightforward story (it’s unnecessarily complicated, and the dialogue is too clever by half). He can’t match either master in their capacity to draw out the tension till one’s neck hairs prickle in anticipation. Rather, Samuel thinks like a musician, using gunshots and camera cuts to set the tone. That tactic elevates Nat Love’s killing of an outlaw in priest drag, as each bullet freezes the frame to deliver another word of the film’s title. Later, he leans on Barrington Levy’s reggae classic “Here I Come,” remixed with long silent stretches between drum beats, to make Rufus’ reunion with his gang feel iconic.

Like “Young Guns” or “Tombstone” — the rare recent(ish) Westerns to have connected with audiences — “The Harder They Fall” is committed to putting its stamp on larger-than-life legends. The fact that their names aren’t nearly as well-known as Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp makes the film all the more compelling, especially in the dot-dot-dot coda that follows the final shootout, leaving room either for further exploits or for other directors to come along and expand upon the same characters.

Reviewed at Rodeo Screening Room, Los Angeles, Oct. 1, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 137 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release and presentation. Producers: James Lassiter, Lawrence Bender, Jeymes Samuel, Shawn Carter. Executive producer: G. Mac Brown.
• Crew: Director: Jeymes Samuel. Screenplay: Jeymes Samuel, Boaz Yakin. Camera: Mihai Malaimare.
• With: Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, LaKeith Stanfield, Danielle Deadwyler, Edi Gathegi, RJ Cyler, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole, Regina King, Idris Elba.

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‘The Harder They Fall’ Sees the Old West’s Black Cowboys Ride Again

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

A long, imposing row of straight-backed men and women, all of them on horseback, all of them confronting the horizon of a Western plain. Strange how affecting an image as simple as this can be. But the genre of Westerns is built on such images. We could be talking about John Ford’s painterly visual discoveries within seemingly every crevice of Monument Valley, or the flash-and-dash, uptempo excitement of Sergio Leone’s famed close-ups — on warring sets of eyes, on hot fingers itching for a quick draw — coming at us as if the camera itself were a gun. Style in every sense, even fashion — and, especially, the inimitable styles of its most enduring actors — has long marked the genre. So much so that when style seems to trump so-called substance, the result can still prove not only riveting but subversive, substantive — often as if by accident. The headlined fact about Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall , which is currently streaming on Netflix , is that it’s a Black Western: an oater with a primarily-Black cast, many of them based on real-life historical figures, like Stagecoach Mary , Nat Love , and Cathay Williams (who, unlike and the others, is not directly referenced in the film by a character of the same name, but instead seems to have inspired the tough and witty character Cuffee, wonderfully drawn by Danielle Deadwyler). Don’t mistake this for a sign that the movie is a history lesson in the usual sense. Liberties are taken. Genres and references are criss-crossed and entertainingly reassembled. Bleak forays into the Black subjugation of the era — we’re talking about the late-19th century here, the era of Black freedman towns being established by formerly enslaved peoples while white settlements were similarly pushing farther West — are noted, more than just nodded at, but largely left to rot in the completely inferable near-past. 

“While the events of this story are fictional ,” the movie’s opening cards tell us, “ These. People. Existed.” Yes — but more to the point of the actual movie that follows, not quite like this. The Harder They Fall is a fantastical revamping of history, a gathering of the Black West’s known (but not well-known enough) MVPs into one arena, given a strong, single through-line — revenge, what else? — and satisfying-enough reasons to bump heads. If that sounds too close to fantasy, so be it. The West’s white hero mythology is no less of a fantasy, albeit of a different, far more brittle and poisoned stripe. 

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The Harder They Fall can’t reverse that reality outright or even undo the downplaying of blackness that largely defines the genre. It’s not razor-sharp in its political immediacy the way it might have been if it were made during, say, the Blaxploitation era. The movie’s definitely got politics on its mind — the politics of representation perhaps above all — but more than that, it wants to enjoy the liberty of Black storytelling that can’t be confused for after-school educational viewing. This is a Friday night affair: It wants to rouse us out of our seats — and it does. Samuel’s movie, with its reggae-inflected soundtrack and booming cast ( Jonathan Majors , Idris Elba , Regina King , Delroy Lindo, LaKeith Stanfield , Zazie Beetz, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole — among others) revels in the freedoms of pastiche, reckless violence, and glossy, staccato style. Music cues bump and sway with a joyful disregard for period accuracy. Characters code-switch freely. When a pair of gold teeth get knocked out of a man’s mouth, someone’s quick to swoop in and collect them; the movie’s often funny. 

You’ll have to forgive people the temptation to mention a figure like Quentin Tarantino when discussing Samuel’s movie, because so much of the above — all of this stylistic liberty — is familiar to his domain. But he doesn’t own it. And in the first place, Samuels strikes out, or back, in a couple of pointed ways. One of them is the use of the N word. The second that a white man in The Harder They Fall almost lets it spill from his mouth, he’s shot in the head. He does, at least, get the N out. “He might coulda said ‘nincompoop,’” cautions Cherokee Bill (Stanfield) after the fact. “We ain’t no nincompoop,” says the shooter, Trudy (King). 

Case closed. And where a movie like Django Unchained was an outright revenge fantasy, a reworking of history (and movie mythology) that made a grand show of delivering long-overdue symbolic payback, Samuel’s movie is a revenge story — it’s not so wedded to feigning a sense of just desserts, or commenting on the nation’s bad karma, by way of an orgiastic bloodbath. The fantasy is in the style and concept. If it feels like fan fiction with a well-known cast and a healthy budget, maybe that’s because it is. 

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The Harder They Fall opens the way many a revenge tale opens: a bloody consecration that sends our hero on his way. Nat Love is just a young boy, untouched by violence, when a man with a pair of golden guns stops by his home and, acting on some debt or sense of retribution, shoots Nat’s father and mother right in front of him, then takes a razor and carves a cross into the child’s forehead. That man was Rufus Buck (Elba) — and he of all people seems least surprised when, many years later, he and the boy with cross tattoo, who’s now a man, cross paths again. By that point, Nat Love (Majors) has got a gang of his own, and he’s been picking Rufus’ cadre off one by one while Rufus himself is stuck in prison. Nat isn’t banking on there being a prison break that sends Rufus straight into his orbit, but it’s almost good that there is one, because as his beloved Stagecoach Mary (Beetz) points out, this bloody pursuit can’t really end for Nat until he gets the main culprit, the guy who ended his childhood in a matter of seconds. 

The broad strokes of the story aren’t so original, but the movie wears this with an unmistakable sense of intention. It knows it’s playing us the genre’s greatest hits: a violent stagecoach set-piece here, a swoony bit of maybe-rekindled romance there (with requisite lines like, “I made things. I’ve built things. And I ain’t gonna risk all that just because you came trottin’ back”), a showdown with a sheriff. The movie injects a little freshness by reorienting the historical threat. What encroaches on the frontier community of this film isn’t an anonymous band of faceless Native Americans, as is often the case; and the victims of that imminent violence aren’t white innocents. White land-grabbing — the result of a Black sellout’s backhanded collaboration, to the detriment of this nascent Black community’s survival — is what proves the threat. Here we have a story of a Black freedman town that’s about to get wiped out before it even really gets started. You can see the appeal of a man like Rufus Buck at a time like this. Sure, he has a bad rep. He is a violent man. But that also means he’s a powerful man. And it wouldn’t be the first time, in this genre, that a community rallied — or was forced to rally — behind a bad apple in exchange for protection. 

The real Nat Love didn’t have a gang in the way that Rufus Buck — also historically-based — did. In the latter man’s case, that gang was by all available accounts pretty fearsome. More urgently, the real Buck had a political commitment that’s not explored here: a desire to cleanse so-called Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) of its white population, having seen firsthand the effect of that population on its Indigenous forebears. Pitting him against Nat Love in this all-star game of a movie proves for a satisfying match-up precisely because it’s impossible. But it also quietly entails whittling down the real man’s ideas and identity: correcting for one crime of representation by committing another. The pastiche can feel like an attempt to justify this. Maybe it does. But it’s also a symptom of the movie’s desire to tiptoe around the murkier politics of the histories it’s toying with by overwhelming us with its panache and satisfying cleverness. The distraction does, indeed, make a credible case for sticking to the fantasy of it all, to not overthinking it. Not enough to distract from what can feel rote about the script, however; one grows thankful for the likes of Cuffee, and RJ Cyler’s Jim Beckwourth, and the reliably wonderful Stanfield’s dryly funny Cherokee Bill for keeping things buoyant when even fancy camera tricks can’t make up for those stretches of staleness. It’s almost a fault that the story’s secondary characters, even when reduced to great one-liners, nearly walk away with the movie. But the leads get in some good air time, too; actors like Regina King are a pleasure to watch no matter what they’re doing. 

Elba’s the most effortless. But, then, he’s already played a cowboy of Rufus Buck’s caliber, just in an entirely different kind of movie: the Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower , from a few (long) years ago, in which he starred as the mysterious gunslinger Roland Deschain. Even he doesn’t quite match the shock and joy of Medina Senghore’s brief turn as a pregnant, frontier-savvy badass in this year’s underrated Those Who Wish Me Dead . But he works for this movie because he’s in on what it’s delivering. Everyone is. They’re all chewing the scenery, lapping up the style that Samuels is not only eager to deliver, but capable of serving up in ample doses. Because The Harder They Fall is a good piece of wish-fulfillment pop. It knows what it is. It’s accomplished enough not to be mistaken for what it isn’t trying to be. And that’s true even if, in this case, veering closer to actual history might have proven even more invigorating — and no less entertaining.

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Movie review: 'the harder they fall'.

Bob Mondello

Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors, Regina King and Zazie Beetz star in Jeumes Samuel's western, which has a fictional story, but is based on real people.

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The Harder They Fall Reviews

Packs the ambient violence of a sports world and a media scene that are infested with gangsters; it’s an exposé not just of boxing but of the American way of business.

Full Review | Jul 18, 2022

Robson and Yordan have fulfilled their aesthetic objectives, making The Harder They Fall one of the most honest American films in recent years. But in accordance with the limitation of their vision, they only scratched the corrupted crust of [boxing].

Full Review | Mar 28, 2022

A lousy racket lurking around some of the prize fighting arenas of the country is being depicted in one of the most gripping films to come out of Hollywood crucible.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2019

Honored as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema by the American Film Institute, the late iconic Humphrey Bogart is now similarly memorialized with the re-release of this screen classic compilation.

Full Review | Dec 25, 2011

In this noir sports melodrama, which is his final screen role, Bogart gives a powerful performance.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 5, 2011

This hard-punching boxing-business picture... comes out swinging from the very beginning and doesn't stop until just before the end.

Full Review | Mar 25, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 25, 2006

O ltimo filme de Bogie traz o veterano em mais uma tima atuao (ainda que Steiger quase roube o show) e suficientemente ambicioso, ainda que um tanto maniquesta. ... uma pena, tambm, que as lutas sejam to mal encenadas.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2005

Fairly gritty and potent for its time, director Mark Robson (The Seventh Victim) delivers some terrifically brutal fight footage.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 27, 2005

The unwell Bogie's last film is not a knockout, but his hard-hitting performance is terrific.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 16, 2004

Even in a film where everyone seems to end up a loser, Humphrey Bogart finishes his career with a solid Bogie performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 78/100 | Oct 25, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2003

Both [Rod] Steiger and [Humphrey] Bogart deliver outstanding performances, and director Mark Robson (Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls) paces the action deftly.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 21, 2003

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The Harder They Fall review – Idris Elba rides into trouble in garishly violent western

Jeymes Samuel’s gonzo revenge western, with a cast including Elba, Regina King, and Zazie Beetz is enjoyable, if face-splatteringly brutal

T he London film festival saddles up for a gonzo revenge western which aims to reclaim the often erased African American side of this genre and history. It stars Regina King, Idris Elba and LaKeith Stanfield, and is created by the impressive hyphenate Jeymes Samuel, also known as singer-songwriter and film-maker The Bullitts, who also co-produces along with Tarantino veteran Lawrence Bender.

Samuel has brought out short movies alongside his music releases in the past and now makes this headbangingly, face-splatteringly violent feature debut, featuring the gun-toting gangsters of the old west wearing old-timey hats of all shapes and sizes. This is a really cine-literate piece of work, with echoes of Sergio Leone, John Sturges and perhaps also Mario Van Peebles’s Posse. There are some terrific moments, although the pace and the drumbeat of violence, confrontation and standoff is maybe a bit uniform, and I would have liked a bit more witty or tender dialogue to go into the mix. But if it’s more style than substance, well it really is tremendous style, and the four-note punch that hammers out the title on the screen at the beginning – THE-HARDER-THEY-FALL – is inspired.

It’s about two gangs of people almost entirely inured to violence and fear: one is led by Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), who bears a cross cut into his forehead by the villain who killed his mum and dad in front of him when he was just a kid – and he’s out for revenge. Those under his command include sharpshooter Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), trigger-happy Jim Beckworth (RJ Cyler); this even includes the local marshal, Bass Reeves, played by Delroy Lindo, whose unofficial alliance with the Nat Love gang signals that they are kind of the good guys, just about. But the most important member of the gang could well be Stagecoach Mary, played by Zazie Beetz, with whom poor Nat is hopelessly in love.

Ranged against them are the Rufus Buck gang. Rufus himself is played by an impassive Elba, whose character is in fact absent from the screen for quite a bit; riding with him are the formidably tough Trudy Smith (King) and the inexpressibly cool Cherokee Bill, played by Stanfield. They have a crooked gold-toothed sheriff under their whip: Wiley Escoe, played by Deon Cole. Rufus’s gang begin by rescuing their leader from a prison train and reveal (a bit bewilderingly) that they have a federal pardon for confronting the military unit guarding Buck because of the army’s own brutality.

The Nat Love gang are effectively reunited when they ambush the Buck gang and steal their ill-gotten gains from a bank job; this brings them into a confrontation that was always going to happen, given Nat’s need for payback and Buck’s guilt. The matter is complicated when Mary, with imperious chutzpah, actually rides into Buck territory on a recon mission and is kidnapped, and Love and his followers are forced to rob a bank in a white town (with houses and furnishings in an eerie, facetious shade of white) to ransom Mary and pay what Rufus still figures they owe him from the original larceny. But Nat has plans to turn this against his old enemy.

Every shot, every scene, every exchange from The Harder They Fall is combat-ready and garishly tensed for violence – and Samuel certainly brings the freaky mayhem, with gruesome relish and high energy. My feeling, though, is that there is a diminishing return on it, and the big reveal at the end is slightly silly and somehow retrospectively discloses that we haven’t really found out enough about Rufus Buck’s backstory. But Samuel is a gunslinger with style.

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Review: Netflix’s starry Black western ‘The Harder They Fall’ is both a dazzler and a muddle

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

“While the events of this story are fictional … These. People. Existed.” So begins “The Harder They Fall,” with an intriguing setup and enough jarring punctuation to drive home that you’re watching (ahem) a period picture. And as if it were taking its cue from all those full stops, this historical western fantasia unfolds at its own disorienting stop-and-go rhythm. When the outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) settles a score in the opening moments, he shoots his man four times and occasions four blood-spattered freeze-frames, each one bearing a word from the movie’s fatalistic title.

For dramatic purposes, Nat is the most significant of those fact-based, fictionalized gunslingers, a Black cowboy legend who was born to enslaved parents on a Tennessee plantation in 1854. Playing fast and loose with history, British writer-director Jeymes Samuel and his co-writer, Boaz Yakin, have given their Nat a very different if no less traumatic origin story. As a young boy (played by Anthony Naylor Jr.), he loses his family in spectacularly brutal fashion, setting the story’s long-simmering revenge plot in motion; years later, he and his trusty gang find themselves tracking his parents’ assassin, the vicious outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). Rufus runs with a gang of his own, only one that’s bigger, nastier and heavier on Hollywood royalty.

Not that “The Harder They Fall,” which opens this week in theaters before arriving Nov. 3 on Netflix, is generally lacking in celebrity. Its sprawling cast, recently announced as the winner of a Gotham Awards ensemble tribute prize, sets up a dazzling standoff between established stars and stars in the making. LaKeith Stanfield plumbs new depths of sotto voce silkiness as Cherokee Bill, the quickest of quick-draw artists. Regina King rocks a bowler hat as Gertrude “Treacherous Trudy” Smith, who’s not much slower. (Her first act here is to kill a white man before he can finish uttering a racist epithet.) As the Rufus Buck Gang’s MVPs, they’re an exceptionally magnetic pair of villains, with a bad-cop/badder-cop routine that’s good for a few queasy chuckles before the killing starts.

Their enemies on the Nat Love Gang side include the irrepressible Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler), who shoots almost as well as he shoots off his mouth, and who maintains a nicely bickersome rapport with trusty comrade Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi). A flinty-eyed Zazie Beetz throws a punch and swings a rifle as Stagecoach Mary, who in real life was the first Black woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service; here she’s been squeezed into the less interesting role of Nat’s erstwhile love interest. Another real-life pioneer is the deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, though his accomplishments are more hinted at than expounded on in Delroy Lindo’s charismatic growl of a performance.

Holding this scrappy but dependable crew together is Nat, played with sly, understated wit by Majors, who came to indie film prominence in “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and recently earned an Emmy nomination for “Lovecraft Country.” What that HBO series did for Jim Crow-era horror/science fiction is more or less adjacent to what “The Harder They Fall” means to do for the 19th century western: to pick up the long, rich and frequently obscured threads of Black history and restore them, by imaginative means if necessary, to a genre from which they have been summarily removed. Vengeance may drive this movie’s narrative engine, but Samuel is after another kind of cinematic restitution (a process that began with his 2013 western “They Die by Dawn,” a 51-minute test drive for this project).

Fans of this gleefully ahistorical meta-movie revisionism may detect the superficial influence of Quentin Tarantino in Samuel’s fondness for 12-letter expletives, flashy shooting techniques and attenuated rhythms, which alternate between long stretches of dialogue and eruptions of bone-crunching violence. But the controversy and skepticism that have greeted Tarantino’s powder-keg treatment of race are unlikely to surface here. Unlike, say, “Django Unchained,” “The Harder They Fall” makes not even the barest of narrative concessions to whiteness; set well after the abolition of slavery, it treats its white characters not as scene-stealing villains but as bumbling non-entities. (They’re also the butt of a sharp visual gag I won’t spoil here, beyond crediting the ingenuity of Martin Whist’s production design.)

Old-school cinema buffs, meanwhile, will have fun spotting homages to the significant but under-seen canon of Black westerns, such as Sidney Poitier’s “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), whose bank robbery scene gets a playful echo here, and Mario Van Peebles’ “Posse” (1993), which mounted its own starry corrective to the genre’s whitewashed history. But “The Harder They Fall” has its own vibrantly contemporary sensibility, evident in the bright-hued digital sheen of Mihai Mälaimare Jr.’s images and the wide-ranging musical idioms deployed by Samuel, better known as the singer-songwriter and music producer The Bullitts. Working with Shawn Carter, aka Jay-Z (who’s credited as a producer), he weaves in several well-chosen Afro-Caribbean and hip-hop tracks that brilliantly defamiliarize our sense of a classic western soundscape.

These aesthetic pleasures supply considerable moment-to-moment excitement. I wish they were enough to make “The Harder They Fall” a movie as good as its intentions deserve, to carry it over its patchy stretches and lapses in momentum. I’ve tried to avoid dwelling at length on the plot, mainly to avoid duplicating the movie’s mistake, but it plays like a jam-up of familiar set-pieces — an epic train robbery, a few bank holdups and several bloody street fights en route to a climactic shootout — that complicate the surface of a fairly simple, even simplistic, gang-vs.-gang setup. And with so many real-life figures jostling for attention, the departures from the historical record, rather than liberating the movie’s imagination, wind up feeling oddly arbitrary. Surely the truth (or something close to it) of who these men and women were must have been more fascinating, and more worth mythologizing, than what transpires in this strained mashup.

There are exceptions, none more memorable than Cuffee (a ferociously expressive Danielle Deadwyler), a skilled fighter inspired by Cathay Williams, who famously passed herself off as a man and enlisted in the U.S. Army. Tagging along with the Nat Love Gang, Cuffee is the character who conforms least to expectations and, perhaps for that reason, the one who most fully satisfies them. She reminds you of all the stories that haven’t been told — and leaves you wishing that this arrestingly showy, fitfully involving movie had spent more time telling hers.

‘The Harder They Fall’

Rated: R, for strong violence and language Running time: 2 hours, 17 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 22 in limited release; also available Nov. 3 on Netflix

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The Harder They Fall review: Making the Old West feel new again

Like any genre, the American Western has been reinvented countless times over the years, its boundaries pushed, prodded, and tested, and its palette both literally and figuratively repainted through various filmmakers’ vision. Netflix continues that tradition with The Harder They Fall , a neo-Western adventure that assembles an all-star cast of African-American actors portraying real-world figures from the Old West, but overflows with modern style, symbolism, and cinematic spectacle.

Something special

Character building, music mash-up.

The directorial debut of filmmaker Jeymes Samuel,  The Harder They Fall casts Lovecraft Country  star Jonathan Majors as Nat Love, the leader of an outlaw gang with an affinity for robbing other criminals. Nat has made it his life’s mission to avenge the murder of his parents by the notorious criminal Rufus Buck, played by Idris Elba, and when he learns of Buck’s impending escape from prison, he gets the gang back together for one final, dangerous job. The only problem? They’ll need to get through Buck’s own deadly gang of outlaws before Nat can have his vengeance.

The Harder They Fall sets itself apart in a crowded genre early on, thanks to a blend of innovative music and visual elements that somehow manage to make the film feel both surprisingly fresh and era-appropriate in tone. The film’s musical score hits a sweet spot between slavery-era spirituals and modern, powerful hip-hop, pulling you deeper into its gritty world of gunfighters and outlaws, and Samuel’s lens fills every scene with symbolism and memorable, heavily stylized shots.

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All of that attention to detail ultimately pays off with a mix of music and imagery that’s more than just spectacle, thanks to memorable performances from its talented cast.

As Nat, Majors’ tremendous range is put to good use in The Harder They Fall . Whether he’s firing off a hail of bullets or a subtle smirk, Majors makes the most of every moment of screen time he’s given, and he continues to be one of Hollywood’s most fascinating leading men to watch in any performance. His role in the film alone would be enough to make it worth watching, but  The Harder They Fall is overflowing with memorable characters and shots spread throughout its 137-minute running time.

Among the rest of Nat’s gang, Zazie Beetz throws herself into the role of Nat’s shotgun-toting former lover Stagecoach Mary and keeps the character prominent and compelling despite an arc that sidelines her for large portions of the story. RJ Cyler and Edi Gathegi portray cocky quickdraw expert Bill Pickett and sharpshooter Jim Beckwourth, respectively, and the scenes they’re given — both together and individually — help relax an otherwise meticulously crafted, carefully structured film with some genuinely fun exchanges.

Although Elba is, as usual, wonderfully effective as the film’s menacing primary villain, it’s Buck’s gang that consistently provides some of the film’s standout roles.

The Harder They Fall (2021) new

“Treacherous” Trudy Smith is the sort of cold, calculating killer that an actor can have a lot of fun playing, and Watchmen  actress Regina King clearly does so. Even standing alongside Elba’s ruthless, aspiring crime lord, King makes it clear at all times that she’s the most dangerous person in the room — man or woman — on more than one occasion, and sells that threat effectively over and over again throughout the film.

On the flip side, Oscar nominee Lakeith Stanfield’s performance makes unpredictable gunslinger Cherokee Bill one of the film’s most inscrutable characters, with muddied morals, lethal skills, and one brilliantly delivered line of dialogue after another. His motivations are as confusing as your feelings about him, which alternate between wanting to see an entire movie about his character and wanting to see him dead.

Although  The Harder They Fall is thoroughly entertaining and wonderfully crafted, it isn’t without a few weak points.

The film is filled with clever dialogue, but the actors’ delivery is occasionally drowned out by the film’s aforementioned powerful score. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it’s particularly frustrating given how much thought and craft clearly went into the script and the actors’ interpretation of their characters.

Some of the big names featured in the film also feel a bit underused, given their talent and high profile, with Beetz’s character vanishing for chunks of the film and award-winning  Da 5 Bloods actor Delroy Lindo not receiving nearly enough screen time (or development of his character) as he deserves.

The negatives are few and far between in  The Harder They Fall , though, which ultimately delivers an ambitious and wildly entertaining adventure set against a powerful score that amplifies and accentuates Samuel’s unique vision for the film. It isn’t easy to stand out in a crowd, but  The Harder They Fall carves out a special niche for itself that makes it as fascinating as it is fun to watch.

Directed by Jeymes Samuel, The Harder They Fall premieres November 3 on Netflix.

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The Harder They Fall Review

The Harder They Fall

If the Western has largely been the domain of grizzled white men both in front of and behind the camera, The Harder They Fall is a flip, fun, flashy corrective. Building on his previous work (his debut album They Die By Dawn & Other Short Stories ), director Jeymes ‘The Bullitts’ Samuel (brother of Seal) puts pistols firmly in the hands of under-represented groups rarely featured in cowboy classics and lets rip.

This wildly entertaining reimagining of American history sees outlaw Nat Love ( Jonathan Majors ) discover that Rufus Buck ( Idris Elba ) — the man who executed both of his parents and brutally branded Nat with a scalpel — has been freed from incarceration. Both men set out on a collision course, leaving enough bloodshed in their wake to make an abattoir blush. Nat’s posse includes quick-shooter Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), sparky saloon singer Mary Fields ( Zazie Beetz ), Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler) — Samuel’s genre inclusivity also stretches to featuring women in prominent roles — and Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi); in Buck’s corner, he’s packing ‘Treacherous’ Trudy Smith ( Regina King ) and quick draw Cherokee Bill ( Lakeith Stanfield ), who we meet in a tense train heist (check out the name on the carriage) — the duo are an unlikely but electric pairing. Majors makes for a winning presence as Nat and Elba is suitably mean and moody, expertly delivering a game-changing late-in-the-day monologue. And, as ever, Delroy Lindo adds gravitas as Bass Reeves — in reality the first Black Deputy Marshall — who becomes swept up in Nat Love’s gang.

Jeymes Samuel owes a huge debt to Tarantino, but finds some nifty licks of his own.

As exciting as the casting is Samuel’s style, full of verve and imagination. From freeze frames to whimsical captions, the director owes a huge debt to Tarantino (early QT collaborator Lawrence Bender is a producer here), but finds some nifty licks of his own (Nat and Cuffee hold up a “white bank” that is literally white). However, marvelling (or cowering in fear) at The Harder They Fall ’s ultra-stylised gore would be to miss its true focus: to shine a light on Black Americans in the Old West so often marginalised in Hollywood history. A third of cowboys were Black and took on the lifestyle in search of a better life after being freed from slavery. Racism is hinted at (there is a different use of the N-word) but never explicitly referenced. Instead, Samuel trusts you to read between the lines. In a defiant attempt to resist a newly imposed income tax, a citizen of Redwood tells Treacherous Trudy that it would put the townspeople between “a rock and a hard place”, to which she staunchly replies, “How long have you lived in this country? A rock and a hard place is what we call Monday!”

Not everything works —the burgeoning romance between Nat and Mary feels undercooked — but Samuel presents a dynamic version of the Western fit for modern-day consumption. Writing, directing, producing and probably even loading the shotguns between each take, Samuel’s fingerprints are also all over the soundtrack, writing the score and adding playful flips of reggae and highlife classics such as Barrington Levy’s ‘Here I Come’ and Fela Kuti’s ‘Let’s Start’. The Wild West has a new lone hero.

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Film Review: The Harder They Fall (2021)

The Harder They Fall, Netflix, 139 minutes, 2021, R

This movie, which shares the same title as a 1956 boxing film noir starring Humphrey Bogart, pays lip service to such real-life black legends of the Old West as Nat Love, Bass Reeves, Cherokee Bill and Bill Pickett, many of whom have yet to have their life stories told on the big screen (though rodeo great Pickett did star in two since lost silent films). From the opening credits—in which a body careens into the air as it’s being shot to pieces—it’s clear The Harder They Fall has no interest in being a staid historical fiction. This is pure, ultra-violent B movie pulp in which attractive movie stars in pristine clothing trade barbs and bullets across a scrumptious Wild West playground (sometimes quite literally scrumptious—I’ve honestly never seen food, from the steaks to the fruit, look so tasty in a Western). The gunslinger’s aim is as perfect as his comic timing. It’s a glossy throwback that calls to mind Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead but is kept fresh by an unfamiliar cast for the genre—an all-black one.

Outside of a few notable examples ( Sergeant Rutledge , Buck and the Preacher and Posse come to mind), black actors have rarely popped up in Western cinema. Considering the genre peaked from the 1930s through the ’60s, when blacks were seldom depicted on-screen at all, that may come as little surprise, but it is nonetheless an unfortunate reality, especially considering that nearly one in four cowboys in the Old West were black. As a lifelong fan of the genre and someone who has admittedly grown used to Wild West mythology feeling and looking a certain way on screen, I found The Harder They Fall a refreshing change of pace. The film darts across the frontier from one vibrant, all-black town to the next accompanied by a great soundtrack that features everything from reggae to funk. While the film is wholly and unequivocally black, a fun bank robbery scene does briefly take us to the white West—which presents an opportunity for some playful set design and color grading.

The Harder They Fall is not without its faults, most of which originate from the fact it refuses one of the key tenets of the B Western—simplicity. What would otherwise be a straightforward revenge story is encumbered by unnecessary plot deviations and machinations that fly at you with all the subtlety of a load of buckshot. Despite a bloated 2-hour, 19-minute runtime, there’s little time to get to know the characters in any real way. They survive on charisma alone. Fortunately for viewers, the cast—Idris Elba (as Rufus Buck), Delroy Lindo (Bass Reeves), LaKeith Stanfield (Cherokee Bill), Zazie Beets (Stagecoach Mary), among others—has abundant charisma. Nat Love, re-envisioned as a sort of Wild West Robin Hood, is played by Jonathan Majors, and he’s so fantastic that one is left disappointed when he isn’t given more to do. The film grows overly infatuated with its thinly drawn peripheral characters and sometimes feels like it’s trying to get 20 singers to harmonize. The individual players may be fantastic, but the movie doesn’t work as a sprawling ensemble. It should be Majors’ movie—he proves himself more than capable as the lead.

Despite such shortfalls, director Jeymes Samuel does boast great control over style and tone—which remains playful enough as the plot bounces from one cliché to the next—though for some it may be too reliant on cartoonish violence. Ultimately, The Harder They Fall is an on-the-nose genre film, like they used to make ’em—there’s the good guys, there’s the bad guys, and they’re gonna duke it out…and there’s Ms. Lauryn Hill on the soundtrack.  

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The Harder They Fall review: Netflix's starry, bare-knuckled Black Western doesn't stint on style

No country for old men.

A man, a horse, a gun: There are only so many ways the West can be won. That hasn't stopped Hollywood from taking its own revisionist cracks at the genre for decades now, and a movie like The Harder They Fall — an electric pulp Western co-produced by Jay Z and featuring a panoply of Black stars — can hardly be faulted for coming out with saddles (and a few other things) blazing. The result sometimes feels like a film made almost entirely of style and swagger, a body count with a killer soundtrack. But there's satisfaction in that kind of bloody, bare-knuckled storytelling too, and in the fresh legacy it spins from old-hat archetypes.

"While the events in this story are fictional," a title card reads, "These.People.Existed." And it's true that Nat Love ( Jonathan Majors ) really lived, a cowboy hero born into slavery in the Old South. The actual Nat earned his stripes as a bronco rider and steer brander, though screen Nat has a more starkly cinematic story: As a little boy, he watched a man ( Idris Elba ) assassinate his parents at the dinner table, then leave him with a cross carved into his forehead as a permanent souvenir. Now grown he's become the leader of his own gang, a sort of grand-larceny cleanup crew. (As one of his junior guys explains it to an unhappy rival, "You rob banks, we rob ya'll.")

Nat may be an unrepentant outlaw, but he's a lover too: He still carries a serious torch for Mary ( Atlanta 's Zazie Beetz ), a singer with her own saloon to run and not much tolerance for the shenanigans of her erstwhile ex. His ragtag crew — including the androgynous scrapper Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler) and dimpled, hot-dogging upstart Jim (R.J. Cuyler) — isn't really a match for the posse led by Elba's ruthless Rufus Buck. Backed by the likes of his steely consigliere Trudy Smith ( Regina King ) and quick-draw shooter Cherokee Bill ( LaKeith Stanfield ), Rufus cuts a casually murderous swath, taking what he wants from whatever small town he passes through and brass-knuckling local sheriffs with impunity.

The script, by first-time director Jeymes Samuel — whose background is primarily in music — and filmmaker Boaz Yakin ( Prince of Persia , Now You See Me ) sets up a lot of its chess pieces without being in any particular hurry to connect them; much of the first half passes by in episodic vignettes more notable for their great outfits and violent conclusions than for moving the plot along. (One knockdown battle between Beetz and King pulls in pitchforks, horseshoes, boat oars, and barbells before it's done.) What the movie (in select theaters now, and streaming Nov. 3 on Netflix) does have in excess is its cast's charisma. Actors like King, Elba, and Delroy Lindo bring the easy command of established veterans, and Majors, a recent breakout in Lovecraft Country and The Last Black Man in San Francisco , has the gravitational pull of a born movie star.

That goes a long way, though it's hard not to wish for a finer-tuned screenplay that made room for the layers lurking beneath all that true grit and gun smoke. Without more background color and context, the deaths tend to pile up with inevitable flair but not much effect, the timing of characters' various grisly ends predicated mostly on their place in the IMDB billing order. In the final, sobering scenes, the story does pivot from its brash anachronisms and O.K. Corral shootouts to tap into a deeper emotional well, hinting at the more resonant movie that might have been. Until then, it's happy to go hard — letting the chips, and the unlucky desperadoes, fall where they may. Grade: B

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The harder they fall, common sense media reviewers.

Cheeky Western with Black cast has graphic gun violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

While there are positive messages about resilience

Characters are motivated by justice and loyalty. B

Having a predominantly Black cast in a Western is

Extremely graphic violence throughout, much of it

Two characters embrace and kiss.

Frequent use of the words "motherf--ker," "s--t,"

Adults occasionally drink and smoke cigarettes.

Parents need to know that The Harder They Fall is a cheeky, arty, graphically violent Western about real-life outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) and his enemy, Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), who murdered Love's parents. When Love finds out that Buck has been released from prison, he reconvenes his crew of street…

Positive Messages

While there are positive messages about resilience in the face of adversity, the overwhelming themes are violence, crime, and revenge.

Positive Role Models

Characters are motivated by justice and loyalty. But they seek justice and show loyalty through lying, stealing, murdering, and inflicting violence on innocent people.

Diverse Representations

Having a predominantly Black cast in a Western is a notable for a genre that's traditionally been heavily whitewashed. Cuffee displays expansive gender expression. While there are certainly "damsel in distress" moments in line with the traditional Western machismo, the movie's Black female characters are comparatively untraditional in their gender expression. Writer/director/producer Jeymes Samuel is Black.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely graphic violence throughout, much of it involving guns/shoowing. Close-up killings, gory displays of blood, guts, flesh wounds, and death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Frequent use of the words "motherf--ker," "s--t," and "bitch."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Harder They Fall is a cheeky, arty, graphically violent Western about real-life outlaw Nat Love ( Jonathan Majors ) and his enemy, Rufus Buck ( Idris Elba ), who murdered Love's parents. When Love finds out that Buck has been released from prison, he reconvenes his crew of street-smart gunslingers to help him seek revenge. Traditional Hollywood Westerns tend to omit the women and people of color who inhabited and prospered in the early settlement of the American West; this one uses historical Black figures as an inspiration for the story and tries to provide a diversified take on the routinely whitewashed genre. Mature content includes extremely intense gun violence, with gore, blood, guts, flesh wounds, and dead bodies. Characters also swear frequently ("motherf--ker," "s--t," "bitch," etc.) and occasionally smoke cigarettes and drink. Although characters demonstrate resilience in the face of adversity, the movie's overwhelming themes are violence, crime, and revenge. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (5)
• Kids say (4)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Violent, stylized and lots of fun

What's the story.

In THE HARDER THEY FALL, a young Nat Love ( Jonathan Majors ) witnesses his parents being murdered by Rufus Buck ( Idris Elba ). In addition to the psychological scars of that trauma, Love is inflicted with a physical scar: a knife wound on his forehead in the shape of a cross. Years later, Love learns that Buck has been released from prison. Love's friends -- including Mary Fields ( Zazie Beetz ), Jim Beckworth ( RJ Cyler ), and Bill Pickett ( Edi Gathegi ) -- join Love on his quest to avenge his parents' deaths. Luckily, Love's crew is made up of skilled, street-smart gunslingers and crooks who are willing to put their lives on the line to defeat Buck and his gang. A series of epic, wildly choreographed shoot-outs ensue, with people on both sides wounded or left for dead until Love and Buck must face each other to determine the ultimate victor. In the meantime, there's romantic tension on both sides. Love and Fields have to contend with their unresolved history, while Buck and Trudy Smith ( Regina King ) dance around the notion that their loyalty to each other is due to more than just friendship.

Is It Any Good?

There's something powerfully restorative about seeing Black people on horses: It's a historically prevalent image that's been largely erased from mainstream media. The Harder They Fall seeks to change this. Writer/producer/director Jeymes Samuel grew up watching Westerns and didn't see himself accurately reflected. Drawing upon real, historic Black figures (previously the subjects of books including Best Shot in the West , Bad News for Outlaws , and The Legend of Bass Reeves ), Samuel constructed a Western inclusive of the women and people of color who lived and prospered during the early settlement of the American West. The movie's fictional town of Redwood seems to reference the real-life Greenwood District of Oklahoma, which was one of the United States' most prominent concentrations of Black businesses. Known as "Black Wall Street," it was burned to the ground by White residents in the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.

Samuel cleverly nods to race when Love robs a bank in a White town: The buildings, the clothes, the inhabitants, and even the dirt on the ground are bright white. When he returns to Redwood, the "colored" town," the sets, the wardrobes, and the people are colorful and vibrant. Samuel keeps with the Western tradition of gratuitous violence; the gushing blood, the death, and the destruction are at Tarantino levels and can be difficult to watch (and, honestly, often feel unnecessary). But he strays from the traditional Western with the movie's glorious soundtrack, which features hip-hop and Blaxploitation-era funk. And while there are certainly "damsel in distress" moments that harken back to the traditional, machismo Westerns that so often depicted White women as feeble and listless, the Black female characters in The Harder They Fall are comparatively untraditional in their gender expression. Mary Fields and Trudy Smith are bold, outspoken, successful business owners with agency and agendas of their own. And Cuffee ( Danielle Deadwyler ) doesn't conform to gender expectations, wincing at the thought of having to wear a dress.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Harder They Fall compares with other Westerns. In what ways does it keep with the genre's traditions? In what ways is it different?

How do you feel about the amount of gun violence in The Harder They Fall ? Do you think people risk becoming desensitized to real violence when they watch fictional violence?

How do the charatcters in this film -- and the actors who play them -- compare to other Westerns you've seen? Why are diverse representations in the media important?

How accurate do you think this fact-based film is? Why might filmmakers choose to alter the details in a movie based on a true story?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 22, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : November 3, 2021
• Cast : Jonathan Majors , Idris Elba , Zazie Beetz
• Director : Jeymes Samuel
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Western
• Run time : 130 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong violence and language
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Django Unchained

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Concrete Cowboy

The Magnificent Seven

Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love

Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves

The Legend of Bass Reeves: Being the True Account of the Most Valiant Marshal in the West

Westerns for kids and teens, great movies with black characters.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

'The Book of Clarence' Review: LaKeith Stanfield Shines in Wildly Entertaining Epic

Jeymes Samuel follows up his beloved 'The Harder They Fall' with a comedic take on the story of Jesus Christ.

The Big Picture

• The Book of Clarence takes a revisionist approach to the story of Jesus Christ, posing the question of what would happen if things unfolded differently.
• The film is a wild, fun-filled ride that mixes history, fiction, and modernity to create a hilarious spin on the story while offering a sincere exploration of belief and meaning.
• With a brilliant ensemble cast, standout performances, and a sharp script, The Book of Clarenc e is a cinematic feast for the eyes, ears, and mind that challenges viewers to think about faith.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 London Film Festival.

Emerald Fennell ’s Saltburn is not the only film that premiered at the 2023 London Film Festival that had to contend with the glory of its predecessor. Jeymes Samuel (also known by his stage name The Bullitts) had a marvelous directorial debut with 2021’s The Harder They Fall , a revisionist Western for Netflix that put his highly stylized sensibilities on full display. His second feature, The Book of Clarence , takes a big jump in both stakes and scope , bringing us all the way back to AD 33 in Lower City, Jerusalem. Samuel takes a story that most of the world knows (and some believe) and doesn't so much as revise it but poses the question “What if this happened instead?” After all, whether this is revisionist or not depends on your beliefs. But aside from the Jesus Christ of it all, The Book of Clarence is a wild ride of pure cinematic fun while also offering a sincere story of belief and man’s search for meaning.

The Book of Clarence

Struggling to find a better life, Clarence is captivated by the power of the rising Messiah and soon risks everything to carve a path to a divine existence.

What Is 'The Book of Clarence' About?

Samuel wastes no time in pulling the audience right into the action of Clarence’s ( LaKeith Stanfield ) life . He and his best friend Elijah ( RJ Cyler ) are having a high-speed horse race with Mary Magdalene ( Teyana Taylor ), resulting in both men getting thrown off their cart. The camera cuts to a POV angle, and you can almost feel the burn as their skin grazes off the stones. You’re buckled in now, and there is no getting off. Clarence is one of the very few who don’t believe in this Messiah everyone is talking about — Jesus Christ himself ( Nicholas Pinnock ) — and is socially ostracised because of this. His twin brother, Peter, left their ailing mother ( Marianne Jean-Baptiste ) to become one of the twelve Apostles, and Clarence can't accept how anyone could put their beliefs before their own family.

Clarence’s main predicament is that he owes a considerable debt to Jedediah the Terrible ( Eric Kofi-Abrefa ). This is made worse by the fact that Clarence is in love with his sister ( Anna Diop ). Thinking that if he proves to be a Man of God his debt will be excused, Clarence (while high from shisha) gets the great idea to become the 13th Apostle. In order to do so, Judas ( Micheal Ward ) challenges him to free all the gladiator slaves. This is where we meet the new member of the gang, Barabbas ( Omar Sy ), whom Clarence defeats in battle, freeing him. But this still doesn’t allow Clarence into the Apostles so he tries an even worse plan — pretend to be the new Messiah and put the phrase “fake it till’ you make it” to the test.

'The Book of Clarence's Plot Is as Sharp as It Is Funny

There is way more to the film’s plot but overexplaining would take all the fun away from what an explosive joy it is . It’s clever enough to pull off the concept while still making sure to not rely on it too much. Everything from the costumes, world-building, characterization, and in classic Samuel fashion, music, is outstanding. The Book of Clarence mixes history, fiction, and modernity to bring a hilarious spin on the story of Jesus Christ. Yeah, some Christians will find it offensive. It takes the piss out of the immaculate conception — “It’s a little far-fetched” — and depicts Mary slapping Clarence for asking her if she really is a virgin. While Jesus himself isn’t the main attraction, the way he’s used and how the film parlays its plot into the story that we know today is one of its strongest elements.

Tone can be the fatal flaw of films, and if you want a film to be as funny as it is sincere, then striking that balance in tone is just about the most important element of the script, acting, and direction . So many films — namely MCU joints that shoehorn dad jokes in situations when the world is literally about to end — fail in this department, which is what makes Clarence so refreshing. It takes one of the most serious and sensitive subjects in the world and is able to poke fun at it in a way that opens up an even more nuanced conversation about faith and humans' relationship with it. Anyone can make a comedy, fewer can make a decent one, and only a handful can make one about as serious subject matter as you can get — and succeed.

'The Book of Clarence': Release Date, Trailer, Cast, and Everything We Know

The Book of Clarence doesn’t just rewrite history (or fiction, again, up to you), but i t sprinkles out fun nods and resonant digs at what has happened in the world since this time . The choice to have every Roman guard, including Pontius Pilate ( James McAvoy ), sport imperial English accents is a great way to remind the audience that the Romans weren’t the only Empire to cause devastation. Clarence, trying to suck up to Pontius, tells him, “My best friend is Roman” (this got huge laughs from the audience). Samuel does it subtly but these little details give the film an updated, current feel while still remaining rooted in its setting. Jerusalem City has different gangs, Clarence is told that he’s not welcome in “Gypsy territory,” and Jesus Christ tells Jezebel that soon enough, everyone will know her name. The script is extremely sharp and paired with Samuel’s highly stylized directing and beautiful score and song choices, The Book of Clarence is a feast for the eyes, ears, and mind. What you take from its philosophy is entirely subjective, but the ending is a beautiful mediation on what it means to have faith, and who is really deserving of the glory that we only reserve for white men.

'The Book of Clarence' Has a Brilliant Ensemble Cast

The ensemble cast of Clarence makes for a wonderful “Spot the actor” throughout . It’s great to see the likes of Omar Sy and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (who’s one of the most underrated actors ever but that’s a conversation for another day) back on our big screens. James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch are used sparingly but both of them look like they're having the time of their lives. And David Oyelowo proves again how he can make a lasting impression with just a few minutes of screen time (and that he needs to do more comedies!!)

A particularly fateful scene of Cumberbatch sporting a new (and very recognizable) look is played to perfection, one of the few but joyous camp moments of the film. Tom Vaughan Lawlor chews up the scenery, relishing the hatred and power of a Roman guard. These all work to support the central performance, LaKeith Stanfield in a dual role. He makes Clarence an opportunist swindler full of charm and charisma and a man just looking for a purpose . The film asks a lot of him — action sequences, comedic deliveries, tender romantic moments, and existential awakenings. He captures it all and then some, never letting Clarence get lost in the chaos surrounding him. Stanfield belongs center stage on the big screen, and hopefully he’s done with the Haunted Mansion 's of the world and will get more roles that allow him to exercise his comedic abilities and star power (but please, not the MCU ).

The Book of Clarence is a film very much of its time . No, not AD 33, but 2023. Over 40 years after Monty Python’s The Life of Brian was banned in various countries, Jeymes Samuel’s parody of the basis of Christianity is able to be both irreverent and sincere. It questions how the story of Jesus Christ came to be, even how we drew up this image of him (one of its best jokes). But it also understands that people need faith, and there is a place for religion in the world as long as it’s for everyone and people can keep their minds open. Jeymes Samuel is a master of all trades who can craft character-driven arcs with fun action-packed sequences all against a beautiful score. No actor misses a beat and it confirms LaKeith Stanfield remains not just a brilliant actor but a true movie star.

The Book of Clarence is a wildy entertaining epic with another great performance by LaKeith Stanfield.

• Jeymes Samuel perfectly follows up his directorial debut The Harder They Fall, taking us into a wild ride of pure cinematic fun.
• Stanfield proves that he belongs center stage on the big screen, capturing everything the film needs and then some.
• The film boasts everything from fun action to a beautiful score, with each actor in the brilliant ensemble hitting every beat.

The Book of Clarence is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX

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