The Harder They fall movie review: Retelling a classic story with everything modern

Published: Nov. 8, 2021, 10:33 p.m.

So the good news for movie lovers in Kathmandu is, most multiplexes have opened. The bad news is, many, including yours truly, are still not ready for confined spaces, especially those with zero ventilation and air conditioning in circulation. But those who don’t mind have been enjoying some Hollywood and Bollywood flicks in cinema halls that are half (or more) empty.

Theater or not, nobody is going to stop us from watching movies so long as we have Netflix, YouTube, and all those other OTT platforms that offer new releases every week. But I have to confess that in the past couple of weeks, my movie-watching has lagged a bit because of the festival season and the ongoing T20i World Cup (which I think Pakistan will win.)

Coming to the subject, most Netflix subscribers would probably have seen a motion poster of “The Harder They Fall” movie in the “recently added” section with the unmissable image of Idris Elba looking ruthless in an old cowboy hat. This is Elba’s second cowboy movie this year after “Concrete Cowboy” but this one’s only more gritty, stylish, and Western.

Well, actually The Harder They Fall turns out to be an American Revisionist Western film—a term I just discovered. Revisionist or Post-Western on Anti-Western is a subgenre of Western films that challenge the norms set by the classic. Here, almost the entire cast is black, a rarity in classic Western or even spaghetti Western movies.

Historically, black people have contributed as riders, ropers and wranglers in the Western frontier of the mid to late 19th century. It’s just that Hollywood, in all these years, decided to shove the image of gun-slinging, cigar-smoking, out-for-revenge as predominantly white.

The Harder They Fall challenges this narrative, in its own oddball way that low-key follows the example set by Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 American Revisionist movie “Django Unchained” starring Jamie Foxx in the lead and was a major success, both critically and commercially.‘The Harder’, visibly low-budgeted than Tarantino’s epic, is stylistically close and establishes a group of black people as frontrunners in the American West.

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There is no Western movie without a revenge angle. In this one, Nat Love (Jonathan Majors), as a child, witnesses his parents get murdered at the hands of Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), a deadly outlaw. Like any classic Western, Nat dedicates his whole life to trying to exact revenge for his dead parents and in the process becomes an outlaw himself. In the meantime, Rufus’s gang has grown stronger than ever with the deadly Trudy Smith (Regina King) and quick-draw Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield) joining him. Meanwhile, Nat gets support from fellow outlaw Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), quick-draw Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), Marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo) and Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler).

The story, written by its director Jeymes Samuel, is a typical textbook Western. Dozens of movies have been made with the same storyline. What makes this one more interesting is the execution. Not only does the film put the African-American people of the 19th Century in the spotlight and positions of power, it is also molded stylistically to appease the modern audience.

The cinematography is good where it needs to be and the set design looks like a postmodern version of classic Western movies—deliberately not too elaborate but not too shabby either. The actors, too, fit in accordingly and instead of trying to emulate what’s worked for hundreds of classics in the past, they take a modern approach to performing their roles.

Writer/director as well as co-producer/co-screenwriter Samuel is also behind the film’s music. The music is what truly drives the film’s modernistic production. Again in the footsteps of the great Tarantino, Samuel’s music does not adhere to the Western classic genre. Instead, the background scores range from hip-hop to reggae to Afrikaan and every other genre one couldn’t possibly associate with Western films a few decades ago.

Who should watch it?

A fan of cowboy movies or not, “The Harder They Fall” is an interesting watch for anyone who likes a little action, a bit less melodrama and some good music in the background.