_The Sisters Brothers_ is like a French barbecue: it tries to be authentic but gets lost in all the style. Classic Westerns are classic because they are simple stories based on basic archetypes: good, evil, love, hate, greed, revenge... They are, essentially, retellings of Greek myths in cowboy days. And it's still possible to tap into this story-driven ethos as illustrated by films like _Young Guns_, _Hell or High Water_, or my personal favourite, _Bone Tomahawk_. But there's another school of filmmaking bent on making sweeping, character-driven epics that typically end up as little more than rambling tales of which one can make neither head nor tails. Which is fine for the character but bad for the horse he's driving, because the horse usually winds up lost. _The Sisters Brothers_ is a beautiful film (with special mention to the wonderful score by Alexandre Desplat (_The Tree of Life_, _The Shape of Water_, _Isle of Dogs_...)) containing wonderful vistas and better than average performances, but the story line that insists on running out for two full hours stretches itself thin. Slathering barbecue sauce on duck à l'orange doesn't make it Tex-Mex.

Another Western?  Noooooooo, it isn't.  Like most good movies with a Western backdrop the key to the film is a good story.  That's one of the reasons that I've often thought Westerns are an excellent genre - the writer is not encumbered by needing to explain job, marriage, kids, etc.  We can just get right to story.  Fun fact - The story in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was borrowed from a ninja movie.  A good story is a good story regardless of genre. First and foremost, the acting is tremendous.  Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal offer up stellar performances but the real heart of this movie comes from John C. Reilly and Riz Ahmed (who was excellent in The Night Of).   From beginning to end this just has a very unique feel to it that I couldn't put my hand on.  The final five minutes made me realize what that feeling was (I won't say here).  The message of the film wasn't about the old west or anything like that.  To borrow from the Grinch:  it was something much more. follow me at https://IHATEBadMovies.com and IHateBadMovies on facebook

Far better than expected... The comedy takes a back seat to great acting... My ol'lady killed me, after John C Reilly got bit and swole up, she said look! It's Amy Schumer bahahaha

Waste of good actors for a french western.

I’m not much of a western person, but the cast of this movie caught my interest. I saw a trailer a while back and it seemed to have a Coen Brothers vibe, I suppose that can still be said about the film. Forgive me but I am not familiar with the works of Jacques Audiard but this movie is quite a journey. Again not being a western person I’m not familiar enough to say if it is a common trope for the story to seem meandering. I know that sounds bad but I don’t mean it that way, it kept my attention throughout and the performances are really great, especially John C Reilly. I love the way the movie handles the action and violence because it isn’t really used for suspense or exploited. It is more of a slight hinderance that the Sisters Brothers have to deal with, as sometimes people try to kill them but they are the Sisters Brothers and they will prevail. The story goes in places I didn’t expect and sometimes I wasn’t fully sure what I should be taking away from that. But at the end of the day, it isn’t about some great big showdown, it’s about a place you can call home and lay your hat