Gavin O’Conner | Through the Shattered Lens

Jane Got A Gun, which was released with little fanfare in January and is now available on Netflix, could just as easily have been called This Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck?

In fact, I like that title better than Jane Got A Gun. As far as I’m concerned, I am no longer reviewing Jane Got A Gun. Instead, I am going to tell you about a film called The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck?

The film is a western, taking place shortly after the end of the Civil War. (Isn’t it interesting how every western recently produced has taken place shortly after the Civil War? Way to avoid awkward historical truths, Hollywood.) Jane (Natalie Portman) lives on an isolated farm, with her daughter and her husband, Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich, who is wasted both figuratively and literally). Hammond used to be an outlaw but now, he’s a pretty good guy. But the Bishop Boys are still after him!

Who are the Bishop Boys?

Well, John Bishop is Ewan McGregor. He’s an evil businessman and a bounty hunter and he used to be in love with Jane but now it seems that he mostly just wants to collect the bounty that’s on Hammond’s head. I love Ewan McGregor but, as we all should have learned from his performance in Haywire, he doesn’t make the most convincing villain. McGregor is one of those actors who radiates an inner humanity. No actor falls in love as convincingly as Ewan McGregor. That’s what makes him a compelling actor but it also means that he’s totally miscast as a bounty hunting sociopath.

Anyway, the Bishop Boys end up putting five bullets in Hammond so he goes home to die. “The Bishop Boys are coming,” he says and Jane has to prepare for the upcoming siege. Fortunately, her surly neighbor, Dan (Joel Edgerton, who seems to be bored with the whole thing), just happens to be her former fiancée and he’s still in love with her, though he tries to hide his love behind bitterness and pithy one-liners. It also turns out that Dan was a hero in the Civil War but he’s weary of violence.

Don’t worry, though! Dan is still willing to kill. After all, not much would happen in the movie if Dan wasn’t willing to shoot people…

Anyway, The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck only lasts for 98 minutes but there’s a lot of hints that there was originally supposed to be a lot more to the movie than actually showed up on screen. We get a few lengthy flashbacks, all of which hint at a story that actually explores what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society and which, if properly handled, would have made The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck the feminist western that it’s attempting to be. Watching this movie, you get the feeling that a lot of the original storyline was either not filmed or left on the cutting room floor.

To be honest, I really wanted this to be a great movie or, at the very least, a decent showcase for Natalie Portman, who was one of my favorite actresses even before Black Swan. However, I officially gave up on this film after 50 minutes. That was around the time that Dan started to ramble about life, death, and doin’ the ratt thang. It was all just so clichéd and the rest of the film wasn’t any better.

The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck? did receive some attention because its screenplay was included in the Black List, which claims to be an annual survey of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. The Black List is one of the greatest con jobs ever perpetrated by the film industry. While it’s true that American Hustle and The King’s Speech appeared on the Black List, a typical Black List screenplay usually turns out to be something like The Beaver, Broken City, or Cedar Rapids. You can add The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck? to the long line of Black List scripts that became utterly forgettable movies.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships – sometimes, you have to compromise. Sometimes, you have to do things for your man that you’d rather not do and you have to pretend like you’re enjoying it and sometimes, you even have to do it several times before you get what it is that you want. Case in point: I recently went to two sports films with Jeff.

Now, I have to be honest. I don’t know much about sports in general and quite frankly, I really have next to no desire to know. Why am I so indifferent to this thing that most men appear to be incapable of living without? Well,

1) I have asthma and therefore, I never got to play any of the games that all the other kids were playing. This led to me becoming bitter towards those who could actually breathe and have fun at the same time and,

2) I’m a girl.

My indifference to sports tends to extend even to cinematic sports. Seriously, most sports-related films either put me to sleep or lead to me making a lot of snarky comments under my breath. However, I recently forced Jeff to accompany me to see One Day, which is one of the most girly movies ever made. In fact, it was such a girly movie that I’ve had to see not one but two sports movies with Jeff. The first was Warrior and the second (which we saw on Saturday) was Moneyball.

I don’t quite feel qualified to review Moneyball because, to be honest, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on during most of the film. Normally, I would just say that this was a sign of failure on the film’s part but the audience around me really seemed to love this film and so did Jeff. So, I’m going to refrain from judging Moneyball too harshly. Instead, I’ll simply state that this film was not for me but if you’re a baseball fan (and you really love to get into the nitty gritty details of how a baseball team is put together), chances are that you’ll enjoy this film.

Fortunately, there are a few things that help make Moneyball a tolerable experience even for a sport illiterate like me. The film tells the story of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and how he turned the A’s into a winning team by revolutionizing the way that teams are put together. I’m not really sure what he did that was revolutionary because the film itself really doesn’t spend too much time explaining how his method is different from the previous method. It spends a lot of time telling us that his approach is different but Aaron Sorkin’s script seems to assume that everyone in the audience already knows how baseball works. (That’s not necessarily a slam against the film, either. It’s a baseball movie, after all.) Luckily, Brad Pitt, who gives such a mature and multi-faceted performance here that you hope that Billy succeeds even if, like me, you’re not really sure what he’s talking about half the time, plays Billy Beane. Seriously, this was the first time I’ve ever watched Brad Pitt and forgotten that I was watching Brad Pitt. Pitt is ably supported by Jonah Hill, who plays his assistant and is largely responsible for introducing Pitt to the “new” system. Hill plays his scenes with all the enthusiasm of a high school nerd who has finally forced the cool kids to acknowledge how much smarter he is than them. It’s a truly endearing performance and again, you find yourself rooting for Hill even if you can’t quite understand what he’s going on about half the time.

Again, if you’re a sports fan or a fan of statistics (which I am not because seriously, math is just one big bleh to me), you’ll find a lot of to enjoy in Moneyball. I wish the film had been a bit more accessible for someone like me but obviously, I’m not that target audience and, regardless of whether you’re a sports fan or not, director Bennett Miller keeps the action moving quickly and the performances of Pitt and Hill both hold your attention.

Warrior takes place in the world of “mixed martial arts,” which I assume is the new big sport. I say assume because I actually know even less about the world of mixed martial arts than I do about baseball. Before going in to see Warrior, all I knew about MMA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship was that Russell – one of the most unlikable Big Brother houseguests ever – was apparently a UFC contender. Or maybe it was Jesse. I don’t know. I have trouble keeping all the Big Brother houseguests straight, to be honest.

Warrior is the story of two brothers. One of them is a bitter, pill-popping ex-Marine who fights because he’s angry at the world. Tom Hardy plays him. The other is played by Joel Edgerton and is presented as a happily married teacher who is fighting because he’s flat broke and in danger of losing his home. The two brothers haven’t spoken in years and about the only thing they have in common (beyond the fact that they’re both good at fighting) is a shared hatred for their father (a quite poignant Nick Nolte, doing wonders in a role that seems almost too perfect for him), a recovering alcoholic who sees his sons as his only hope for redemption. Ultimately, the parallel fighting careers of the two brothers leads to a surprise family reunion in Atlantic City where they find themselves both competing in the same brutal, winner-take-all tournament.

Warrior tells a pretty familiar story and there are a few plot developments (such as Hardy’s AWOL status from the Marines) that feel undeveloped but the film still works about a hundred percent better than it has any right to. Director Gavin O’Connor wisely takes a low-key approach to the film’s more melodramatic moments and brings a sense of gritty realism to the beginning of the film that provides quite a contrast to the later gaudiness of Atlantic City. Nolte and Edgerton both give excellent performances and, after years of being best known for his mug shot, it’s nice to see what a strong and multifaceted actor Nick Nolte actually is. However, the film truly belongs to Tom Hardy. In this film, Hardy is a true force of nature and gives a performance that is both frightening and sympathetic at the same time. You want to reach out and give the poor guy a hug even though you know he might end up killing you in response.

Coming out of Warrior, I still didn’t know much about MMA but I did know that I had just seen a well-made, emotionally satisfying film.