Seraphim Falls / Receiving absolutely no Hawai’i release and a perplexing lack of publicity on the mainland, Seraphim Falls finally makes its way to DVD. The neo-Western stars Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan and while it doesn’t inspire Unforgiven levels of revision and deconstruction, it is still intriguing enough to have deserved a wider distribution.

It’s 1868 at the end of the Civil War and Neeson plays Carver, an ex-Confederate colonel who is chasing a Union officer named Gideon, played by Brosnan, through the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. The film opens with Carver close on Gideon’s heels. A rifle shot wounds Gideon in the arm and after escaping by plunging down a raging waterfall, we watch as Gideon very painfully digs the bullet out of his arm with a hunting knife and after sticking the blade into a fire, cauterizes it with the hot metal. Brosnan plays the scene with complete abandon, howling with believable agony while we cut to scenes with Neeson coldly continuing his pursuit like a Terminator in a black bowler hat.

This essentially sets up the entire movie–a sparse and brutal chase narrative with Carver and his gang slowly gaining on their prey and the creatively vicious methods Gideon uses to stay ahead and pick off his pursuers one by one. The suspense is also amped up by the fact that we won’t know the ‘why’ of it all until later; we are given hints, but we don’t know the reason behind Carver’s relentless hunt. Though we automatically sympathize with Gideon during that torturous opening sequence, he may not necessarily be the ‘good guy.’

It’s a very simple, one-note concept that works with the grave, simple majesty of a Cormac McCarthy novel. What helps is the main performances from the two Irish actors. Neeson speaks in gruff, barking anger that matches his steely intent (and somewhat hides his accent), but most impressive is Brosnan. He speaks in hushed whispers that keeps his Irish brogue in check, and we see him cry, scream in pain and believably kill men with a brutality that calls to mind the original Rambo movie First Blood. Taking The Matador and this film into consideration, Brosnan’s range has stretched expansively from 007’s world of Brioni suits and invisible cars.

Playing the third main character is John Toll’s cinematography. The Oscar-winning director of photography for Braveheart and Legends of the Fall films the ice-cold snowy mountain peaks and the simmering heat of deserts with a certain foreboding menace that adds to the atmosphere of brutality.

The only time the film really missteps is with an unnecessary second ‘final’ confrontation between the two mortal enemies. The decisive face-off would have carried more weight had the two not already met up in the third act. (Until that point, they don’t share a scene together.) Being that the chase does go on a bit long, one of the endings could have been shaved off for an even leaner, meaner story.

Also problematic in the final sequence is Angelica Houston and her cameo as Madame Louise, a peddler in a horse-drawn wagon selling a bottled curative. ‘Some say it’s the demon rum in a fancy bottle,’ she says before making a trade with each man for one bullet, since both Carver and Gideon depleted their ammo supplies earlier. As good as Houston is, her appearance is sudden and surreal and throws the level of realism that the film established into flux. Being that her dress is blood red, symbolically speaking, she may as well have introduced herself as Satan.

Still, consistency aside, the ending is satisfying. We eventually learn the reason Carver is so intent on killing Gideon in a flashback toward the conclusion, but by that point, almost existentially, it really doesn’t matter much. The post-Civil War blood hunt becomes an allegory for the Iraqi War and the place Seraphim Falls is imbued with a Chinatown-like symbolism; the setting in the title isn’t as important as what it stands for. Seraphim Falls is the best western you’ve never seen.

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