KILLING FAITH Review: Guy Pearce And DeWanda Wise, And The Devils We Know
Ned Crowley’s new Western, Killing Faith, sets the stage in Arizona’s 1849 frontier with a cast led by Guy Pearce, DeWanda Wise, Jack Alcott, and Bill Pullman. The film also introduces Emily Ford in one of the film’s more discernible and striking roles with a script in which her characters nary utters a word, if ever.
That mute approach is brought on by the young girl’s own mysterious affliction as someone who can snatched the life out of you with an effortless touch of her hands. As such, her adopted mother, a former slave-turned-freewoman named Sarah (Wise) has her confined to wearing mittens and, as it stands, is plotting a quest to a faraway township to visit a preacher who could exorcise from the young girl whatever devilish incarnation seemingly possesses her.
That challenge is met with the help of Bender (Pearce), a widower, blacksmith, and disgraced doctor who is still traumatized from failing to save his own family from earlier tragedy. To add, he’s as jaded when it comes to religion as anyone resigned more to practicality than reading into what he calls “tall tales”. Nonetheless, he’s a bottomless alcoholic faced with possible eviction, and has no choice but to proffer himself to Sarah in aiding her journey.
Set against a plague-ridden atmosphere, the film sees our trio, tailed and later accompanied by Sarah’s lame farmhand, Edward (Alcott) as they tussle with renegade gunslingers and creepy drifters alike. The girl, on the other hand, contributes an ever-lingering mystery about her own past which otherwise gets overshadowed by the plentiful deaths that ensue during Sarah and Bender’s trip. There’s a point in the film where the two go their seperate ways after a scuffle, leaving a wounded Bender to huff it to town with the young girl in hand.
Upon meeting then with the town’s preacher, Ross (Pullman), it’s only a matter of time before Bender learns he may not be savior Sarah thought he was, forcing him in the blaze of gunfire and one scintillating twist and after the next to decide just what constitutes evil when deciding the fate of a single child.
Crowley’s script, co-penned with David Henri Martin, does a terrific job at illustrating the film’s vast character scope. Bender meets his turmoil halfway with a cloth he smalls to satiate himself. He also holds onto an old pistol as one of few avenues of connection he has to his late wife. Sarah’s free status doesn’t mean much for a lot of folks during the late 1800s, but Crowley avoids centering the film in slave narratives by confronting accepted customs that keep the story on the straight-and-narrow.
Alcott’s portrayal of Edward provides ample levity for much of the way while leaving room for something slightly more blighted in the second half, resulting in a surprising turn of events. Pullman’s character is a distinctive question mark which situates itself nicely against the film’s supernatural allure. That’s where burgeoning thespian Ford comes in and even then, Crowley’s dark and brooding Western still manages to leave a little something up in the air for the audience to ponder before credits roll.
Killing Faith, to add, is keen on its lean share of violence and gore. The most absurd moment occurs right at the top in a scene where a rogue gunwoman named Whitey (Jamie Neumann) interrogates a man in a cage before he pulls out a small pistol, injuring one. The macabre kicks as well with horrific scenes of diced corpses and an elequent indigenous exile named Shakespeare (Raoul Max Trujillo) who survived a scalping. A shot of Ford’s character sitting amidst a smoke-ridden camp full of dead, immolated bodies is another to make note of, followed by a pivotal moment involving Sarah, Bender, and a defective pistol.
The movie ends with a moral impasse that alludes to the credulity of evil as a precursor to goodness. It doesn’t really go into the lore behind the girl as it’s all ado with Biblical myths and context you’re welcome to make relevant. That leaves the viewer to deduce what the film’s overall messaging really means unless you take what you see at face value. My advice? See Killing Faith at face value, and leave out all the rest.
Killing Faith is now playing in select theaters from Shout! Studios
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
