The Harder They Fall: Changing the Western Complexion with Real-Life Black Outlaws and Gunslingers

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-plus

Opening theatrically this Friday before heading to Netflix on Nov. 3, The Harder They Fall aims for, and mostly hits the target, with a double-barreled blast of entertainment and historical reclamation.

The movie, full of jaunty bloody-minded humour, with an all-star cast of contemporary African-American actors, aims to change the complexion of the myth-rich Western genre. 

Jonathan Majors (Lovecraft Country, Loki) stars as Nat Love, a revenge-seeking gunslinger in a battle between really old-school 19th Century gangsters. These include such historical characters as Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), Nat Love (Majors), Treacherous Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Stagecoach Mary Fields (Zazie Beetz), Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield) and Marshal Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo).

Jonathan Majors is the revenge-driven Nat Love in The Harder They Fall.

They are brought together in an entirely fictitious plot of high style, peppered with throwback split screens, freeze frames and acrobatic camera work, along with the usual paraphernalia of Stetsons, six-guns and God-painted landscapes. 

In a welcome break with tradition, it’s also a showcase for an eclectic soundtrack of rap, reggae, funk and spirituals, overseen by the film’s British multi-hyphenate writer-director, Jeymes Samuel (a.k.a. musician The Bullitts).  Samuel previously worked as a music supervisor for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (which, like this film, was produced by Jay-Z.

The movie is at its most sinister in the opening scene. A homesteading couple and their eight-year-old son Nat are sitting down to dinner when malevolent strangers, led by Rufus Buck, arrive at the door. By the end of the encounter, the parents are dead and the traumatized child, Nat, is left with a cross carved by a razor on his forehead.  

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Years later, the grown-up Nat (Majors), is a gentleman thief and a wanted man himself. He manages to rob and dispose of one of Rufus Buck’s bagmen and donates the reward money to a local priest. 

He’d do more but his arch-enemy Rufus is doing a life-time sentence in jail, though not for long. During a prison transfer,  a couple of Rufus’ old allies — the philosophical sociopath Cherokee Bill and stylishly Bowler-hatted enforcer, Treacherous Trudy Smith — hijack a train, wipe out a cavalry squad and liberate Rufus.

Shortly after, The Rufus Black gang have taken over the African-American outpost town of Redwood City, imposing an onerous tax on the locals and murderous enforcement, as the price of creating a new “Promised Land” for Black people west of the Mississippi. 

Specifically, it’s a promised land for the warlord Rufus, who holds court in the bar, sipping Tennessee whisky, while a lissome dancer performs. To establish his fiefdom, Rufus is determined to recover 25 grand that Nat stole from them, along with a hefty interest payment.

That leaves Nat headed toward the inevitable showdown, along a team of Avengers-style team of misfit heroes, including sniper Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi), cross-dressing bar bouncer, Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), trigger happy Jim Beckworth (RJ Cyler), local Marshall Bass Reeves and Stagecoach Mary, Nat’s love interest, who owns and performs in her own saloon.  There are so many singing moments, the movie frequently threatens to break out into a musical. 

When Mary rides into Redwood City on a scouting mission and gets captured, the war is on. Though, by that point, the film struggles to hold interest. Truth to tell, The Harder They Fall is better as a premise, than a movie, and the two-hours plus of repetitious clever set pieces and music video moments don’t add up to much of a narrative. 

Too often, the over-qualified actors get a showy turn, in a series of put-downs, smack downs, showdowns and shoot-outs, before disappearing from the screen again. Plotting is sometimes puzzling and character development minimal, which means that the “big reveal” at the film’s end lacks any real emotional punch.

As a template for a TV series, or even a movie franchise, The Harder They Fall, with its big-budget and high-profile cast, could be a ground-breaker. 

We already know that Oscar-winning director, Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) who directs the Marvel superhero movie, Eternals (out Nov. 5) has signed on for a biopic on the first Black marshal, Bass Reeves. Who knows how many more of these historic characters deserve their own stories?

The Harder They Fall. Directed by Jeymes Samuel. Written by Jeymes Samuel and Boaz Yakin. Starring: Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, LaKeith Stanfield, Danielle Dadwyler, Edi Gathegi, RJ Cycler, Damon Wayans Jr., Deon Cole, Regina King and Idris Elba. The Harder They Fall opens theatrically on Oct. 22 and is available on Netflix on Nov. 3.