Director: Gabe Polsky
Writers: Gabe Polsky, Liam Satre-Meloy, and John Williams
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Rachel Keller, Xander Berkeley
Synopsis: An Ivy League drop-out travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams.
There’s much to admire when it comes to Butcher’s Crossing. The breathtaking landscape was shot exclusively on the Blackfeet Reservation in Colorado. There’s a majestic shot of a buffalo hunt scene that doesn’t quite rival anything with Dances with Wolves, but it is good. Even a sense of isolation and danger comes with the American West. However, what Gabe Polsky’s film falls short of is depicting a group descending into madness, which is what the script aims for.
Based on the novel of the same name by John Edward Williams, one of the fundamental issues of Butcher’s Crossing is how it loses its protagonist along the way. That character is Will Andrews (played by Fred Hechinger), who leaves in the middle of his Harvard education for an adventure in a Buffalo hide trading post called Butcher’s Crossing. While there, he locates an old family friend (played by Academy Award nominee Paul Raci), hoping to allow him to accompany his men on a buffalo hunt.
Raci’s character is obnoxious (frankly, his performance seems incredibly over the top) and scoffs at the idea. Young Will then runs into a brazen buffalo hunter who goes by the name of Miller (Nicolas Cage). We cannot tell if Miller sees the youngster as a mark or wants to take him on what he promises: a hunt. You can only read about it in books. The idea is too irresistible for Will to pass up, using all his savings to finance the quest. (Will has $500, or about $14,811.79 in today’s money.) Frankly, I cannot believe they didn’t shoot and toss him in a creek.
From there, we see what makes Polsky’s adaptation tick. Along with his trusty hunting companion, Charley (an unrecognizable Xander Berkeley), and Fred (Jeremy Bobb), often the voice of dissent, they go past the thinning bison herds of the Kansas Plains to a mountain valley in Colorado, where Miller claims to have the biggest herd he’s ever seen and hides as thick as their heads. In one of the film’s best scenes, during the journey to get there, they encounter a mother with her children who have become lost from their party (unsure if their last name was “Donner”) and need water. Miller denies them, holding a gun on them until they leave.
The rest of the film can be interesting, but the adaptation takes a turn, beefing up Cage’s role and tracking his obsession with murdering the entire herd. This consequence causes Will to be reduced to what amounts to sleepwalking throughout the rest of the picture. Here is where the film’s tension should be wrapped up considerably. Instead, Hechinger’s Will attempts to get lost in hysteria but is sullener than anything.
Cage’s Miller takes center stage, including keeping his California accent in the middle of a perilous frontier film. Miller is obsessive but greedy and never succumbs to a psychosis of madness. In fact, the character is never as driven as you’d like, even when attempting to locate the bison herd. Miller is no Colonel Walter Kurtz, and the only psychological break comes from supporting characters in a scene that lacks any raw power. Cage’s character is a narcissist who should be using manipulation and a type of abuse to get the group to do his bidding. Instead, he has a forgiving side that rings false.
In the original work, Will’s reverence for nature and the teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson led him to find peace where humans and nature meet. Just like Saul Rubinek’s W.W. Beauchamp found more than he was bargaining for with the nature of violence in Unforgiven, Will should begin to find out how society is protecting him back home from the cruel reality nature has to offer. Instead, we are given a heavy-handed history lesson about the pillaging of American buffalo.
Butcher’s Crossing never fully completes the psychological factor it desperately needs to connect and meet the film’s weighty themes. The attempt can be respected since the final product as a whole is not as interesting as a handful of parts. However, the film sacrifices storytelling for heavy-handed preachiness that wasn’t needed.
