THE UNHOLY TRINITY, US, 2024. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L Jackson, Brandon Lessard. Directed by Richard Gray. 93 minutes. Rated MA (Strong violence).
A risky religious-overtoned title. However, the Trinity here is a town in Montana, 1880. (And, when we come to think of it, Americans have a penchant for naming towns and cities for religious themes – Corpus Christi, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara . . .) However, even though some of the action takes place in a church in Trinity, the issues are not religious.
The film opens with a hanging. Watching the execution is the criminal’s son Henry Broadway (Lessard) who is urged by his father to take revenge on his enemy. Also watching the execution, with a broad grin at the death, is Jackson, calling himself St Christopher.
This is quite a watchable Western. The scenery is impressive, the plot, while not unfamiliar, carries us along with the character developments and the twists. It is a surprise to find Brosnan as the local sheriff Gabriel Dove, who is determined to maintain order.
When the young man arrives at Trinity, he gradually learns about his father who was involved in a gold robbery at the time of the Civil War. Much of the story is explained by the father’s then partner, St Christopher (Jackson), who at the time was a slave. One of the difficulties of seeing Jackson as a villain is that we have liked him in so many films that we have to make an effort to accept his villainous behaviour, and to accept his exuberant overacting and smiling.
So, where is the gold? Possibly buried under one of the buildings in the town? We are shown the usual life in the frontier town, the gunslingers and their anger, the saloon and its manager and the gamblers, the girls upstairs and prostitution, clashes with the Native Americans, killings, vengeance posses . . .
And, there are some human elements, the sheriff’s sympathetic wife Sarah (Veronica Ferres), standing in for the sheriff when needed, but also acting as a midwife to one of the pregnant town girls, and also looking after the young daughter of another of the prostitutes.
This film could have been made at any time over the past decades but here we are with a 2020s Western. The writer Lee Zachariah and director Richard Gray, both Australian, seem to have absorbed the traditions and conventions of the Western.
Rialto
Released 25 June