Review | Netflix movie review: The Harder They Fall – Idris Elba, Jonathan Majors in blood-soaked Western with a wry sense of humour
- Principal characters in this violent Western are all African-American and, as trigger-happy as the movie is, it comes packed with sardonic humour
- The use of bright colours is exceptional, and the soundtrack – soul, hip-hop and the like – brings real flavour to the experience
4/5 stars
A blood-soaked Western, The Harder They Fall is that all too rare a thing. The principal characters – hoodlums, harlots, bank robbers, gunslingers – are all African-American. As the opening caption tells us, the story we’re about to see is fictional but we should bear in mind “These. People. Existed.”
Unflinching in its depiction of the Wild West, the film opens with a young boy witnessing the murder of his parents at the hands of the merciless Rufus Buck (Idris Elba). We don’t see his face, just the gold pistols he’s brandishing and the knife he uses to carve a cross into the forehead of the terrified lad. Never mind this Christian symbol, Buck is “the devil”, according to some.
By the stylish opening credits, the boy is now a man and the scarred Nat Love (Jonathan Majors, The Last Black Man In San Francisco) dispatches one of Buck’s men, who falls to the ground in a staccato dramatic fashion that one might find in a Sergio Leone movie.
Co-written by Boaz Yakin and British debut director Jeymes Samuel, The Harder They Fall takes its sweet time before Nat will encounter Buck once more. Before that, there’s a ragtag gang to gather, including the top-hat wearing Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), the hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and the gun-twirling Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler).