Television review The Netflix film The Harder They Fall both tests and sustains Western traditions, with Tarantino influences evident

Culture|Television review

Western

The Harder They Fall ★★★

USA 2021

Netflix (K16)

The Harder They Fall begins as westerns often begin: the protagonist receives trauma and revenge begins. The boy sits with his family at the dinner table as an unknown man and his comrades step in, pick up their weapons and start the violence.

The boy grows Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), a renowned leader in his own criminal league. When Love is met as an adult, she has already found the tormentors of her childhood and settled the accounts. The main cause of trauma was Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) does, however, sit in prison, and according to Love, there is enough punishment for the man. Love has now decided to choose love and seeks out her former gang member Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz) to the saloon.

However, it is clear that the anti-hero Rufus Buck will not remain in prison. His gang, Trudy Smith (Regina King) at the forefront, trains for this exemption.

In English with the screenwriter-director Jeymes Samuelilla is behind one previous film. Also 50-minute They Die by Dawn (2013) was western.

Samuel doesn’t actually rewrite the story of Western films but changes their role. There are now also black people in the Wild West, as they have historically been there.

The Harder They Fall however, does not seek realism. It depicts the West as a place of entertainers, gun heroes and sluggish violence, with one wearing a top hat, the other a blue full-body paint and the third a cross-shaped scar on his forehead. Samuel’s vision does not show small farmers, pioneers, or indigenous peoples.

Women, on the other hand, play a key role. Mary Fields and Trudy Smith use a gun, plot and kill if necessary. Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), a transgender character.

The Harder They Fall selects pieces from history and the present that update the genre for today’s viewers.

So stylized violence, popular influences as seen in the musical dimensions of both From Quentin Tarantino. This is my own western film Django Unchained (2012) contrasted the former slave and the slave owner.

Jeymes Samuel’s only reference to confrontation is both more clever and more suggestive. The notch gang strikes a place called White Town, a white town. There are not only faces but also interiors of whites. The difference between a pale city and the abundance of textures and colors elsewhere is probably a reference to the history and present of the whole genre.

The Harder They Fall otherwise trusts the showy style as well as the great actors. A violent, true story, on the other hand, is a more impoverished act than the elements mentioned.

Women play a key role in the series. Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz, left) and Trudy Smith (Regina King) use the weapon, plot and kill if necessary. Picture: DAVID LEE / NETFLIX