Sweetwater: Blu-ray Review
The Movie:
In the late 1800’s, a beautiful former prostitute (January Jones) is trying to build an honest life with her husband in the rugged plains of New Mexico. When she catches the eye of a sadistic and powerful religious leader (Jason Isaacs), her life is violently turned upside down. She embarks on a bloody course of vengeance with the assistance of a renegade sheriff (Ed Harris) who has pretty violent tendencies of his own.
It’s really been a while since I’ve seen a pretty decent western so I was jumping at the chance to check this one out. With Ed Harris and January Jones involved I was even more curious. The film starts out very interesting and goes straight into showing us the crazy, murderous, religious guy which always is pretty creepy in my book. It takes just a little while to set up the story but when it does get to the meat of it, it’s non-stop the whole way. Seeing Jones in a role of a woman encompassed with revenge is a good change of pace from seeing the usual male-driven revenge films. Her calmness created a character with a swagger that would rival any male Tarantino character which I truly enjoyed. Given the time period, the kills seemed to be very bland and not exciting…..except for one of the last ones. You’ll know it when you see it and will agree that the guy got what he deserved. Harris is an actor that has an ability to transform himself, whether it be big or small, in a way that you don’t see him as Ed Harris. From the way he walked to his demeanor, he WAS the character. Issacs was the perfect villain for the film. Like I stated before, just the fact that he was murdering people “in the name of God” makes it the ultimate evil thing someone could do. He had this creep factor about him that was uncomfortable and weird but that’s what made his performance good. I’m not going to go on and say it matched Kill Bill or anything but it was a type of film that we don’t see much of anymore so watching it was entertaining. If you dig revenge films then you’ll get a kick out of this one.
