‘The Harder They Fall’ The Western Genre Still Holds Gold In Its Hills

It’s alluring, the Western as a cinematic concept; hands either hovering readily over holstered revolvers, or gingerly crowning worn cowboy hats atop bountied heads. Jeymes Samuel's The Harder They Fall (2021) is well aware of how watchable these classic tropes are, and is proof positive of how fun they still can be. If you have intuitions about what this Netflix original has to offer, chances are you're right. You're in for everything from shootouts to the witty one-liners that precede them. Bold editing harmonizes with some very cool mise en scene to present us with a modern twist on a classic flavor. So take ten paces toward your couch, turn, and draw your remotes.

From the first scene, Samuel makes it clear that this is going to be a hyper-stylized version of this genre flick. Our notorious antagonist marches into a family's home to interrupt their grace with his gold plated pistols. Samuel heightens the outlaw quality of this character by keeping his back to the camera, quickly manufacturing an intrigue that draws the audience to the edge of their seats - who is this guy? Bang. Without a word, this man takes the lives of a young boy's parents. Right there in front of him. Tears of agony well up in his eyes as he screams in protest, and Samuel has made another calculated move in this opening sequence; a lot of people are going to be killed in this movie, this has now been made clear to us. The fact that these first two have been treated seriously, by being coupled with shots capturing the resulting pain and sorrow, is a crucial part of what makes this film worth investing some time into. Samuel is not just here to scratch a violent itch, but to tell us a story that amounts to much more than a body count.

The Harder They Fall is not shy about its exaggerated style, and one of the vectors by which they communicate the audacious attitude of Samuel's vision is through the shot selection in the film. I imagine that Samuel sat down with his Director of Photography, Mihai Malaimare, to storyboard these scenes and in that room, some very cool choices were made. We’re given a lot of super - close ups of eyes; a nod to the spaghetti westerns of an earlier time, when before a duel we reliably came in close on the furrowed brow of an angry Clint Eastwood. Samuels employs it proudly when our protagonist meets his love interest, for instance. Or cutting them back and forth opposite the thunderous hooves of an approaching cavalry. There is a particular shot in the film, though, that my brain keeps returning to: good guy Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) stares at bad guy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) in the kind of town that you can be on opposites sides of, and still look someone in the eye. The camera traverses this short, shotgun block of saloons, barbershops, banks and brothels in one smooth shot, coming all the way from Elba and stopping close on Nat’s face. It’s as if the town has parted like the Red Sea for this particular showdown.

Briefly, a few other highlights include the performances of Regina King and Danielle Deadwyler, and the soundtrack. Zazie Beetz fell flat. She is a monolith, exhibiting only a confrontational skepticism and an awkward accent the whole time. Even when flirting or in deep thought, she puts almost nothing else on the menu. To her credit, imagine attempting to contend with a cast like this one. The music was another place where the film took a more contemporary posture. Hip hop and reggaeton garnished the movie in a captivating way, commanding the scenes that it underscored. There were times when I felt like I was watching the same shot of people on horseback walking across the desert, wordy music bumping, over and over again. Perhaps if Samuel and his team took the time to distinguish these transitional clips, the shots would have packed more of a punch. I can recall the precise moment Rick Ross plays in Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) for example. That said, this soundtrack might be the coolest in recent memory, and it is on Spotify. I checked.

I, for one, and happy to know that this genre is still expanding. The Harder They Fall should excite us all for Jeymes Samuel’s next project, whatever that may be. Movies like this, saturated with brazen choices, is where the director’s vision is closest to the surface. While it is not a rebirth of the genre with regard to style, it certainly is with regard to casting. The film unravels like silk, as we find ourselves yet again enamored with people fighting and falling in love in the Wild West.