The Thicket
The Thicket
The Thicket: A boy who, after his sister is abducted by one of the most vicious killers known as Cut Throat Bill, goes to recruit an extremely deadly bounty hunter, Reginald Jones who then becomes the head of a band of misfits willing to help him retrieve the missing girl.
Face to face Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis) asks Peter Dinklage’s Reggie Jones about his manhood and Jones bitterly complains that this is the shortest man he has met in his life, Cut responders that this man is the ugliest he has ever met. The imagery of these two lethal professionals, one a hired body snatcher and gunfighter, the other a wanted criminal, huddling each other is not to be missed.
Long before director Elliott Lester’s The Thicket starts handing out new narratives for each of them and revealing their pasts, we hasten to advance that these two have been done disastrously by society in (more likely) all heros movies. He is a midget, she is a bulldagger, and a battle-seasoned woman that every thing that a woman is supposed to be is not.
What comes first is that every person who is here, in one way or the other, is looking for a home, mainly unconsciously. Towards the climax of the film, a family that is not biological is formed and is viewed on the background of the criminal group’s hierarchy.
This is not to mean that Reginald Jones is a holier-than-thou person or a Whip for the Resurrection with a heart of gold in his breast. Quite the opposite, together with his burly pal (don’t get the impression he can’t handle himself with a gun or in a knife fight) Eustace (Gbenga Akinnagbe) they are bounty hunters and will take pretty much every job no matter how lowly and filthy for the sake of money.
Jack (Levon Hawke), a mild-mannered but devoted Christian, employs their services in order to extricate his sister Lula (Esme Creed-Miles) from Cut Throat Bill and her gang of thugs. After their parents die of the smallpox disease, the children are kidnapped while being relocated into a different foster home, to which Jack later on sweetens the land fame to the deal.
It is also not clear what other purpose Cut Throat Bill has for Lula, but having her men brutally attack and rape the defenseless girl is out of the question. In that respect, there is some short term respite in the security of Lula’s person at any rate till such time that we hear that she is being taken to some place called The Big Thicket.
There are enough dramatic performances to extract from Keanu Reeves defiance of, it is a Chris Kelley script, who adapted a novel by Joe R. Lansdale, wanting to combat that found family in every way possible and throwing in too many characters.
So that this flaccid apathy fails even when one of the crowd in the picture is a thumping bounty hunter looking for Reginald Jones, couriers of whom include Metallica lead James Hetfield. Then there is a sex-working Jane external to the organization who Jackson leaves at a place he later returns to under the impression that she is a damsel waiting to be rescued, implying that this is not just a race against time plot about rescuing his sister.
Everything else tossed into this story comes as an unfortunate deviation from Peter Dinklage and Juliette Lewis’s commendable performance as tormented misfits from the same background but different ends of the morality pole. It’s another interesting character for Peter Dinklage, who, impressively, does not accept to have his profession driven into a straightjacket.
No, he is not just an archetypal dwarf and a victim that beats his head against his abusers; he wield weapons and drives them away. There is also a hard side to the man and an instinct to shape Jack to a more conventional man, which is somewhat required in order to save Lula, which she does.
The first and the most important drawback is the fact that the narrative is too innocent and the character development becomes really shallow. Tension that has developed at the mess will, quite predictably, lead to violence at The Big Thicket.
Somehow, however, this imposing edifice fails to convey the impression of a terrifying, one-of-a-kind locale or a place which is creatively exploited for stunning action and sets. Unfortunately, there’s no denying that those settings are nonchalantly ruthless, and even the details of actual historical pieces are very much on point.
Instead of enlivening the central operation, overstuffed plot lines and characters probably restrained the breath of the work, whenever it was a book and not just a russian screenplay. The Thicket would perhaps have benefited more from other alterations as an adaptation in relation to the story mainly freshness and crispness.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller, Western
- Country: United States
- Director: Elliott Lester
- Cast: Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis, Esme Creed-Miles
