Joe R. Lansdale’s 2013 Western novel The Thicket begins with the most outrageously tone-setting opening line to a book since Hunter S. Thompson’s “We were somewhere around Barstow” opener from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“I didn’t suspect the day Grandfather came out and got me and my sister, Lula, and hauled us off toward the ferry, that I’d soon end up with worse things happening than had already come upon us, or that I’d take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave and a big angry hog, let alone find true love and kill someone, but that’s exactly how it was.”
Anyone familiar with the Texas author/martial arts instructor’s work knows he’s a pulp writer who thankfully has a dark, absurdist sense of humor. Whatever genre he dives into, he throws in some mirth with the mayhem. Yes, things can get grim, but things can also get amusingly weird. Unfortunately, everything is grim in the movie adaptation of “The Thicket.”
Star/producer Peter Dinklage headlines the movie as the aforementioned Reginald Jones. Along with his trusty sidekick Eustace (“The Wire” vet Gbenga Akinnagbe), this cynical, take-no-prisoners bounty hunter gets hired by Jack (Levon Hawke, yet another child of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman getting into the family business), a Christian teen looking for his little sister (British actress Esme Creed-Miles), who’s been kidnapped by violent outlaw Cutthroat Bill (Juliette Lewis) and her gang.
While the premise has more in common with ”True Grit” and “The Searchers,” two novels that went on to become iconic, big-screen oaters, “Thicket” has more in common tonally and visually with the brutal spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Corbucci (his snow-capped downer “The Great Silence” is definitely an influence) and bleak acid Westerns like John Hillcoat’s “The Proposition” and Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” Director Elliott Lester (who last directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in the straight-to-VOD “Aftermath”) hits us with a lawless, hopeless Wild West continually covered by snow (the movie was shot in Canada), and just as cold and unforgiving.
Chris Kelley’s menacing script is populated with scumbags and psychopaths, ready to kill or harm anyone who shows either a backbone or strong moral character. (And yet, unlike the characters in Lansdale’s book, none of them seem to have a racist bone in their bodies.) This means our naive siblings equally get their lumps before learning to toughen up in order to survive this cruel, chilly world. It’s bad enough their parents died from smallpox and their granddad (Guy Sprung), who was taking them to their aunt in Kansas, was gunned down by Bill, setting this whole hellride in motion.
Lester and Kelley refuse to let up on the bad vibes, occasionally hitting you with moments of wince-inducing violence. Dinklage (in surly yet sage mode) and Akinnagbe (reassuring and valiant) thankfully have an engaging chemistry, keeping you invested in this journey that could easily lead to their demise. Unfortunately, other castmates don’t know whether to go straight or go for broke.
Lewis shuffles around this thing like a gravelly-voiced combination of Calamity Jane and Captain Jack Sparrow. Originally conceived by Lansdale as a man, her main heavy is now a big, bad momma who’s obviously been hardened by years of oppressive, physically and mentally scarring male patriarchy. But Lewis is all pouty and deranged, chewing on licorice when she’s not chewing the scenery. We also have odd-ass appearances from Metallica frontman James Hetfield as a deputized henchman looking for Jones and bratty comedian/podcaster Andrew Schultz, all over the damn place, as a pimp who gets miffed when Roy decides to leave his brothel with an imprisoned employee (intended Batgirl Leslie Grace, who inexplicably grows an Afro halfway through this).
“The Thicket” may enthrall those looking for an icy, gunslinging thriller that wears its savagery and mercilessness with ghoulish, gruesome pride (the same folks who dig those DIY hood movies might get a kick of this). But the unlimited amount of Sturm and Drang on display will turn away those looking for a fun, engaging shoot-’em-up–like readers of the guy who wrote the book this bad ol’ time is based on.
