Are westerns making a comeback? In the wake of Taylor Sheridan’s wildly successful Yellowstone series and its various spinoffs, more contemporary-made westerns have been turning up on streaming services. Despite its title, Murder at Yellowstone City isn’t affiliated with the Sheridanverse; it’s not even brand-new, as a 2022 release just surfaced on Netflix. But fans of the genre might still be enticed by a new-ish western starring Gabriel Byrne and Thomas Jane. So is this other Yellowstone worth checking out?
The Gist: It’s Sunday morning when two different men march into relatively sleepy Yellowstone City, a would-be gold-rush town that has started to wilt. Dunnigan (Zach McGowan) is crowing about striking gold, boasting that he’s not just rich, but likely to bring an economic boom with his discovery. Former slave and out-of-town visitor Cicero (Isaiah Mustafa, from football and Old Spice ads), meanwhile, keeps quiet. When Dunnigan is later murdered, Sheriff Ambrose (Gabriel Byrne) assumes this mysterious stranger must be responsible, being the only one in town unaware of the tight ship he runs. (He also finds gold among his belongings.) But levelheaded minister Thaddeus Murphy (Thomas Jane) and his wife Alice (Anna Camp) believe Cicero is innocent, and must investigate the matter further to clear the newcomer’s name. Basically, Murder at Yellowstone City is half sheriff-versus-preacher standoff, half murder mystery.
What Will It Remind You Of?: Plenty of westerns made after the genre’s peak in the 1950s qualify as revisionist versions. Murder at Yellowstone City is firmly in the B-movie, straight-down-the-middle tradition of non-classics from that period; the more contemporary equivalent is something like Tombstone (as opposed to something like Unforgiven), though it’s nowhere near as good as Tombstone.
Performance Worth Watching: Gabriel Byrne and Thomas Jane both turn in sturdy performances, but they’re more or less what you’d expect when picturing them in a western. (Sadly if understandably, Byrne’s Irish brogue is missing in action.) But it’s Anna Camp as Jane’s steadfast wife who gets to show off a change of pace for anyone who knows her primarily from the Pitch Perfect series. Tanaya Beatty, as a native woman who runs a horse paddock, could also use more screen time.
Sex and Skin: There is indeed some consorting with women of ill repute, specifically Dunnigan’s dalliances with his mistress Isabel (Aimee Garcia). Also, most of the female supporting characters take baths, though the movie keeps things modest there.
Memorable Dialogue: Not really. A lack of colorfully engaging language is one of the movie’s disappointments.
Our Take: To some degree, you can’t half-ass a western. I mean, you can, and many have, but to make one in the 2020s usually means committing to a certain level of location shooting, costuming, and production design that’s hard to do with shortcuts, CG or otherwise. Murder at Yellowstone City fulfills those minimum requirements; it’s a decent-looking movie with some convincing period dressing, good performances, and a strong mystery hook. But the story shoots itself in both feet. First, it takes way too long to convince Thaddeus and his wife that Cicero must be innocent (a conclusion they reach passively, because another character supplies them the evidence); then, after finally setting up the conflict between Thaddeus and Sheriff Ambrose and putting Thaddeus on the case, it reveals the real killer (to the audience, though not the characters) with another 40-plus minutes to go on the clock. (Granted, maybe there aren’t enough suspects to sustain it for much longer.) This approach leaves the Thaddeus struggling to catch up in a film without a strong lead; it makes the whole thing seem even more like a potential 90-minute B-picture inexplicably drawn out past the two-hour mark. On top of that, the fact that so many of its plot turns involve a masked man killing the movie’s most interesting women makes passages of it feel more like a slasher than an oater. (Also, there are a lot of scenes of people looking sadly at corpses.) Commit to that idea — a slasher in the Old West — and you might have something. But this Murder is neither here nor there; not a powerful morality tale, and not much of an exploitation picture.
Our Call: Western fans could do a lot worse than Murder at Yellowstone City; they could also probably scroll Tubi or Pluto and find some old obscurities that are notably better. Unless you’re a genre hardcore, you’re probably safe to SKIP IT.
Read the full article here
