In recent years, an area near the small town of Livingston, Montana, has become a popular filming location when it comes to cowboys, smoking guns and Native Americans. After all, the Yellowstone Film Ranch offers pretty much all the motifs you need for a solid western with a complete western town, remote wooden cabins in the forest, tunnels in the mountains and vast steppes.
In addition to the successful series “Yellowstone,” where filming for the recently released fifth season cost around $12 million per episode, the small-budget independent production “The Unholy Trinity” was also filmed here – although the financial difference is particularly noticeable in terms of equipment and action. The genre-experienced director Richard Gray (“Murder in Yellowstone City”) was able to rely on a prominent ensemble led by ex-007 actor Pierce Brosnan and Samuel J. Jackson (“The Hateful 8”), but without any unique selling points he only delivers a mediocre off-the-shelf Western.
Sheriff Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan) has a hard time keeping the peace in the town of Trinity.
Montana, 1888: The inexperienced Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) witnesses how his father Isaac (Tim Daly) is executed – and wants to take revenge on the sheriff responsible, Saul Butler. To do this, he travels to the small town of Trinity, but finds out that the lawman is already dead – supposedly murdered by the fugitive Blackfoot Indian Running Cub (Q'orianka Kilcher). The new sheriff Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan) and his wife, doctor Sarah (Veronica Ferres), take Henry under their wing, who soon shoots the leader of a gang of gangsters in self-defense. But the opaque St. Christopher (Samuel L. Jackson) has also traveled to Trinity with Henry, who is after Isaac's treasure of gold hidden here and has no qualms about playing the town's less than peace-loving residents against each other…
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In the script of “The Unholy Trinity”, apart from the original revenge plot, socially critical motifs can quickly be found that at least attempt to break out of genre stereotypes. The identification figure is an effeminate, naive milk boy who carries the urn with his father's ashes around with him, only getting out of difficult situations by chance and with outside support – and thus represents a grounded antithesis to the radiant Western hero.
“The Hateful 8” star Samuel L. Jackson can score points with his own charm – but unfortunately only too rarely.
St. Christopher, on the other hand, lived as a slave until the Civil War, stole his owner's gold and was later put back in chains by Isaac – while Running Cub leads a deprived existence as a hermit far away from civilization, far away from her displaced tribe. However, not enough is made of the last two characters and their actually tragic fates in the plot, which meanders indecisively between (substitute) father-son drama and revenge western:
Samuel L. Jackson simply lacks screen time behind his preaching of Bible verses and his typical mischievous grin, and Q'orianka Kilcher, who celebrated her breakthrough with a similar role as Pocahontas in Terence Malick's “The New World” (2005), looks very implausible as an indigenous woman with thick make-up and sprayed lips under a hat that is way too big. As the second native German in the cast, Veronica Ferres, who has now also arrived in Hollywood, delivers a much more solid, if inconspicuous, performance as a doctor.
It's not just Pierce Brosnan who provides unintentional comedy
In any case, the reasonably exciting cheap western, with lots of pretty landscape shots of the snow-capped mountains of Montana and at least a few solid shoot-outs, has some unintentional comedy. Pierce Brosnan, whose two sons Dylan and Paris can be seen in supporting roles, appears pithy and playful with an Irish accent, although now a bit stiff at the hips at over 70 years old – but at the end he casually jumps from the canopy of the first floor to the ground for the big showdown.
With a daring day-night change, it is also puzzling how long it takes St. Christopher to walk the less than 100 meters from the empty saloon to the church in the afternoon, where he makes a discovery with which nothing happens in purely dramatic terms. A brief exchange of fire, a slowly spreading fire – that was it. “The Unholy Trinity” particularly messes up the finale, while you can overlook some of the loveless and lifeless interior scenes (such as the badly leaked saloon and the very puristically furnished church) much more graciously.
Conclusion: With the power of two confident old stars, Richard Gray creates a solid western that lacks stringency and – as in the disappointing finale – confidence. “The Unholy Trinity” offers solid, but also clearly inexpensive genre fare.