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). In the Buck posse, there is LaKeith Stanfield as the ruthless Cherokee Bill and Regina King as “Treacherous” Trudy Smith, who bust their leader from a heavily guarded train and take him to Redwood City to lord it over the terrified residents. As trigger-happy as the film is, it comes packed with a wry sense of humour. At one point, a bank robbery takes place in the town of Maysville where the buildings are all ghostly white – so much so, it looks like a preliminary digital image before the detail has been layered in. Just as you’re adjusting to that, a caption pops up: “It’s a white town” – a nod to the snooty inhabitants as much as the architecture. While the film feels overstretched (at 130 minutes, it could’ve been tighter), Samuel puts a distinct spin on the genre. His use of bright colours is exceptional, and the soundtrack – soul, hip-hop and the like – brings real flavour to proceedings. Led by the charismatic Majors, and with sublime support from the likes of Beetz, Cyler and Stanfield, this is an explosive Western that reeks of revenge-fuelled gun-smoke. The Harder They Fall will start streaming on Netflix on November 3. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook