“When outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being released from prison he rounds up his gang to track Rufus down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this assured, righteously new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), his right and left hand men – hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler) – and a surprising adversary-turned-ally. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and they are not a group that knows how to lose.”

Rotten Tomatoes

What makes a typical western?

The setting

You know the vibe. Bleak. Desaturated. Overwhelming prairies, barren mountains, and the occasional river pushing through. The log cabin framed by big skies. The odd rattlesnake.

Shoot first, talk later

Itchy fingers resting on a belt or hovering above the holster. The quickest draw will walk away. The second quickest will topple over on the dusty road snaking through the one-horse town. Or the pistol under the card table. Shooting from horseback. Oh, and horses. Horses running, horses being killed.

The one-horse town

Wooden, ramshackle stores. Butcheries that wrap meat in paper, pharmacies with big glass bottles. The saloon.

The saloon

The wooden flip doors. The dark, velvety interior filled with cigarette smoke. Working girls drooped over the bar counter or hanging over the first-floor balustrade. The fierce madame, the upright piano and backyard whisky.

A new frontier

It is an unknown land. Danger hides behind every corner. But the heroes are determined to forge a new life. They are brave, stoic.

Revenge

Someone’s death is being avenged. It is normally the dead wife/mother, sometimes a brother or father. Revenge is best served cold. It is an all-out annihilation, and because it is a western, it is allowed. You do not stop until every bastard has been gunned down.

All these markers could be seen as a typical western. But then some of them also fit nicely with Dune (2021), or many of the Star Wars films.  A new frontier. The bleak landscape. The saloon. Shootouts. Even the one-horse towns. These films are not seen as westerns though.

On the other hand, what about The Assination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. It has everything but the shootouts. It deals more with what the characters are thinking, and not at all with how fast they draw. Yet it is seen as a western.

So, is it a combination of all these markers? Or when the creator of a film labels it so? Or what you experience when you watch it? In the case of The harder they fall it is all of the above – it has all the markers, the creators label it a western, and is surely felt like one to me when I watched it.

And it is an utterly thrilling watch. Well, up until the end.

This western is 2021-fresh, 1970s-cool, but still firmly grounded in the wild, wild, west. The director kept all the markers that make for a great western but pimped it up with a contemporary treatment – from the slick yet subtle costumes, the bold characters that feel like they are from a 2021 superhero film, the pumping sound track and an all-star cast – from stalwarts such as Delroy Lindo and Idris Elba to the youngblood Zazie Beetz, Jonathan Majors and LaKeith Stanfield.

And then the ending happened, and you realise you had been hoping for more depth all along, for a turn of these ugly, violent events. You know, some redemption. Alas, they are all thugs. Granted, well-dressed, styling, thugs, but still thugs that kill at will because they feel like it. And even though the shoot first, talk later motto is a trademark of a western, the hope that it would be more than that crept in somewhere along the line.

SPOILER ALERT

There was a grand moment between Rufus and Nat, where they could have turned around, looked at the carnage and thought, Nah, it wasn’t worth it. They could have been better men. But they go the other route, commit some more carnage, and ride off into the sunset. The film would still have been cool, calm, collected and styling, but it could have carried an emotional depth.