The Dead Don’t Hurt

1. Movies At Home : 
2. The Dead Don’t Hurt

The Reel Review

A-

A Dutch immigrant and an independent-minded French-Canadian woman fall in love in the mid 1800s American West, their relationship tested when he joins the Union during the Civil War, leaving her to fend for herself against the nearby town’s villains. Vicky Krieps and Viggo Mortensen star in this Western that Mortensen wrote and directed.

With a gentle violin score and lingering cinematography, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a beautifully filmed, old-fashioned Western. But don’t let that fool you – there are some surprises in addition to the genre’s usual messages about honor and loyalty. It gives a rare glimpse inside the female character’s frustration as she is left to make a life out of the remains of what she had expected her life to be. Danny Huston, Garret Dillahunt and Solly McLeod are the corrupt mayor, unscrupulous rancher and his violent, loathsome adult son, the latter a villain whom you will love to hate.

Krieps (The Phantom Thread, Corsage) gives yet another captivating performance as Vivienne, making her independent but still within the realm of realism as she handles each new challenge with a can-do attitude. The biggest beef with Mortensen’s film is its sluggish pacing and a couple of medieval knight fantasy flashbacks that don’t quite fit within the story, but they are minor drawbacks to an otherwise beautiful film capturing a bygone era. Well done.

REEL FACTS

• Viggo Mortensen didn’t plan on acting in The Dead Don’t Hurt, but agreed to do so after the actor scheduled to play the main character dropped out just before filming began.

• The Dead Don’t Hurt was filmed in and around the town of Durango in central Mexico and in the Canadian provences of British Columbia and Ontario.

• W. Earl Brown, Garret Dillahunt and Ray McKinnon were all in the HBO Western series Deadwood.