On DVD and Blu Ray - "Sweetwater" - I was pleasantly surprised by this competent little revenge Western- it's a helluva lot better than it's trailer, one that had me steering clear of the flick for months. A good friend kept ribbing me to give it a chance and I'm quite glad he did. It's a quality Western in a cinematic year where the genre was woefully thin.
January Jones (X-Men: First Class) essentially stars as a former prostitute looking to go the straight and narrow with her new husband, played by Eduardo Noriega (The Devil's Backbone). Jason Isaacs (The Patriot) is the murderous religious leader "cleansing" the countryside of undesirables while Ed Harris (The Rock) portrays the grizzled and enigmatic Sheriff who rides into the territory searching for two travelers who recently disappeared in the area.
I've previously felt January Jones is a horrible actress, yet the narrative doesn't rely too heavily on her to emote or carry the film with extensive dialogue- she ultimately ends up as the embodiment of revenge, laying waste to the despicable sorts who have wronged her in crowd-pleasing fashion.
Jason Isaacs is once again a stellar villain, an imposing, sadistic preacher who oozes menace in every scene he's in. I'm of the mindset that the English actor shouldn't even attempt to play anything but bad guys from here on out.
Ed Harris is absolutely delightful (and often legitimately funny) as the whirling dervish of justice who handles the lion's share of the film's best dialogue with aplomb. He steals the film outright in a role that's somewhat reminiscent of his prior turn as a frontier lawman in 2008's Appaloosa.
Country and Western music fans should keep an eye out for musician/performer Jason Aldean as one of the bloodthirsty preacher's henchman.
Sweetwater utilizes a lower budget quite nicely and sports some fine cinematography of the beautiful Sante Fe and Abiquiu, New Mexico landscape. Although I wasn't too keen on an extended segment concerning a ballistics report, I found very little wrong with the narrative's logic. Although there are a few strange poetic excursions sprinkled about, their placement and execution worked well within the scope and tone of the film.
This is violent and bloody material, a little weird here and there, but entertaining throughout and well worthwhile for fans of the Western genre. With the box-office failure of Disney's mega-budgeted The Lone Ranger, even smaller releases of this nature might be hard to come by for the foreseeable future.
Recommended
8.0 out of 10
Director: Logan Miller
Cast: Ed Harris, January Jones, Jason Isaacs, Eduardo Noriega, Stephen Root and Jason Aldean
Run-Time: 95 minutes
MPAA: Rated R for strong violence, language, some sexual content and graphic nudity
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