THE THICKET is a new western that played a few theaters last year and now is on Tubi (who have their name on the credits). I was aware of it because it’s based on a book by Joe R. Lansdale – I don’t know the book, but his name will usually draw my attention. That said, I’m always wary of an indie western in this day and age. Maybe I’m generalizing, but most of them I’ve come across just don’t cut it. I put this one on, though, and I immediately thought oh shit, this is a real movie.

Honestly I was shocked how beautiful this thing looks. It’s a snowy one, shot on location in Calgary, with a real eye for those times when there’s a little sun out, reflecting on skin, bringing a little color, not just white and grey. Or sun beams floating down between tree branches, lightly powdering the frame with white. Credit is due to cinematographer Guillermo Garza, who seems to have gotten really good at his craft on many music videos and at least one Adidas commercial.

Here’s a frame I grabbed. The poor guy’s afraid he’s gonna get shot and I’m marveling at the lighting. But that’s the movies.

This one stars Esme Creed-Miles (Hanna in the TV show of HANNA, and Shirley Temple in MISTER LONELY) as Lula Parker, a young woman who gets abducted by outlaws, and Levon Hawke (BLINK TWICE, son of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, and it shows) as her brother Jack, who’s determined to get her back.

It’s got some of that blunt, economical dialogue I love. Lula comes home to Jack digging a hole in the yard. “Daddy?” she asks.

“While you was gone,” he says. Then he tells her not to go inside. “We’ll wait for Grandpa. He had it already.” Grandpa (Guy Sprung, STONEWALL) burns down the cabin and plans to bring them to live with their aunt, but at the river crossing they get into a confrontation with Cutthroat Bill and associates, which turns into the kidnapping and subsequent hunt.

There’s a great cast here that I’m obviously gonna get into, but by far the highlight of the movie is Juliette Lewis (MEET THE HOLLOWHEADS ) as Bill. She has a bunch of deep scars on her face and I figured the one on her throat was why she talks in a low, scratchy voice, but there’s a great moment later that made me question that. She has that mania Lewis is so known for, but channeled into a more slow talking, traditionally masculine type of villain. The bully who comes into a general store and menaces the owner by talking to him about licorice for a while before getting to the inevitable part where she pulls a gun out. Lewis is so scary and funny in this, she makes Bill seem kind of dumb and child like but wily enough to always come out on top. And unfortunately word is she likes pretty girls and Lula is the prettiest she’s had so far.

Jack finds a bounty hunter named Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage, FIND ME GUILTY) who’s a master long range gunman with a reliable ex-slave partner named Eustace (Gbenga Akinnagbe, The Wire) who drives a motorized wagon. After some disagreements they team up to go after Bill for the bounty on her head. People underestimate Reginald – in his first scene some rich asshole named Bailey (Ryan Robbins, WARCRAFT) refuses to pay him the full price for digging a grave (a side gig, I guess), tries to fight him and gets slashed up. So while Reginald and Eustace are chasing Bill for Jack they themselves are being chased by two guys hired by Bailey, the Deasy brothers, Simon and Malachi, played by James Hetfield (yes, that one!) and Macon Blair (BLUE RUIN). Maybe if I paid more attention to Metallica I would be distracted by seeing Hetfield in a western, but I thought he fit the role well and did a good job of being cynical and grizzled.

On their journey Jack helps a prostitute named Jimmie Sue escape a brothel; she contributes to the mission and looks amazing rocking a blue coat and afro. She’s played by Leslie Grace (IN THE HEIGHTS), so after I saw how cool she was in this I once again disagreed with Warner Brothers’ decision to make an entire BATGIRL feature film starring her and then use it for a tax scam instead of release it.

Arliss Howard (PLAIN CLOTHES) is a preacher, and has a really good scene where he’s horribly burned, standing in the smoldering ruins of a church, explaining Bill’s origin story. David Midthunder (HOSTILES) doesn’t get anything that good, but he’s the most menacing guy in Bill’s crew. Like I said, a good cast.

As is often the case the side characters are all more interesting than Jack, who’s kind of the protagonist. Hawke sounds very similar to his dad in his early movies and has a similar quality of being just a little more interesting than the typical weiner character. But it’s fun to see Reginald’s disdain for his company, and also pretty satisfying when Jack and Jimmie Sue use less brutal methods and find leads that Reginald couldn’t.

The story is pretty simple and straight forward. They have a mission and they do it, there’s a cost to it, they try to make due with what they have left. It’s a pretty extensive confrontation that still kinda made me think “That’s it?” But maybe that’s true to life in the old west, or the nature of solving problems with guns. The general outcome is inevitable, but it’s more about the lead up – the place and the mood and the set of great characters bouncing off each other, one by one revealing the fucked up atrocities of the past that sent them down this path. Jack and Lula seem sheltered, not having suffered the kind of abuse everybody else did, then you remember the relentless series of tragedies robbing them of their family and home. It’s hard out there for everybody.

I didn’t remember the name, but I’d seen two other movies by director Elliot Lester: BLITZ (2011), the unusual Jason Statham dirty cop vs. serial killer movie based on the book by Ken Bruen, and AFTERMATH, the unusual Arnold Schwarzenegger drama based on the true story of a guy who lost his family in a plane crash and tracked down the air traffic controller whose mistake caused it. He’s got an eye for interesting material, for sure, and I think this is my favorite of the three. The screenplay is by Chris Kelley, who did a couple episodes of Banshee and one of Preacher.

It’s a great role for Dinklage, a classic scoundrel/curmudgeon/reluctant hero. Apparently it was his passion project; he’s one of the producers and he’s been attached since not long after the book came out in 2013. It got delayed once by COVID-19, which caused us to miss out on Noomi Rapace playing Cutthroat Bill, but gained us Lewis’ take. Sophia Lillis (IT) and Charlie Plummer (SPONTANEOUS) would’ve been Lula and Jack.

I really like the scene where Bill encounters Reginald drinking whisky by himself, doesn’t know he’s an enemy and has a conversation with him. She’s not nice – feels the need to tell him he’s “the littlest man I ever seen” – but his presence causes her to open up a little, telling him how much she hates people asking about her extensive scarring. I think she’s long past the point of anybody being able to sympathize with her, but it’s interesting when she shows a little humanity. Man, I really gotta read that book.