The Power of the Dog (2021)

Directed by Jane Campion. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Genevieve Lemon, Thomasin McKenzie, Keith Carradine, Alison Bruce, Frances Conroy, Peter Carroll. [R]

Campion’s first feature film in a dozen years is a brooding yet empathetic portrait of festering resentment that poisons the well of a man’s soul and all who drink from it. That man is a volatile Montana cattle baron named Phil (Cumberbatch) who owns a ranch with his more sensitive and generous brother, George (Plemons). When George marries a timid widow (Dunst), Phil exerts a withering, predatory influence over her and her shy, delicate son (Smit-McPhee), and becomes determined to either turn the young man into a tough piece of rawhide like him or grind him into dust. With the rustic splendor of its flinty setting, Phil’s seething masculine filth and rage, and an anxious yet gleaming score composed by Jonny Greenwood, it may seem at a glance to be a spiritual sibling to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, but this film’s stealthy point of view ultimately undoes such criminal comparisons by having the secret savior eventually steal (and disperse) its simmering murderous energy as tonics of redemption and poetic justice. An undercurrent of thrumming dread and gorgeously stark scenery (New Zealand filling in for the American West) keep things moving when the narrative periodically stalls and supporting characters advance and retreat from the mournful spotlight; the ending is a little too orderly (and predictably “explains” the meaning of the oblique title reference), but satisfying in a way that could not be easily anticipated in the previous two acts. Riveting performances throughout, with Cumberbatch leading the way, as off-putting as he is unshakable. Based on a same-named novel by Thomas Savage.

88/100