Black ’47 (2018)

Directed by Lance Daly. Starring James Frecheville, Hugo Weaving, Freddie Fox, Sarah Greene, Jim Broadbent, Stephen Rea, Moe Dunford, Barry Keoghan, Andrew Bennett, Aidan McArdle, Dermot Crowley. [R]

Relentlessly dour period revenge story set in Ireland during the Great Famine. A humorless ex-Ranger for the British infantry (Frecheville) returns to his suffering homeland to find much of his family dead and the survivors in a bad way (and about to get worse); when he sets out to “right a few wrongs,” a veteran (Weaving) who once served with the Ranger joins up with an English officer (Fox) assigned to pursue the murderous brigand and bring him to justice. Shot on an aptly desaturated palette (nearly everything in sight save for the red and gold of the English uniforms looks some shade of grey), the film takes on a curious tone, tackling serious subject matter and then rendering it in pulp. As such, it’s rich in visual detail and grim splendor, but too programmed to take seriously and too somber for visceral pleasures—one starts to wish that director/co-writer Daly had a little more Quentin Tarantino in him and just gone all the way. Ending at a literal crossroads is a touch heavy-handed, but the pic gets at least one detail right—those mid-19th-century firearms sure were unreliable. Dedicated to the memory of “all those who died, and those who went away, never to return,” but not, surprisingly enough, to “John Rambo,” who Frecheville oftentimes resembles (the First Blood version, at least).

67/100