MOVIE REVIEW
“Two Men in Town”
Grade: C
Starring Forest Whitaker, Harvey Keitel, Brenda Blethyn, Luis Guzman and Ellen Burstyn. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb.
Rated R for language. Check listings for theaters. 1 hour, 56 minutes.
Bottom line: A Western too muted to work well
The crime happened eighteen years ago. William Garnett has paid his debt to society in a New Mexico prison. He converted to Islam, cleaned up his act and learned to control his temper.
That’s his hope. And his generally no-nonsense parole officer is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But sending Garnett home to the border county where he grew up isn’t a good idea. There are old associations to worry about. And then there’s the sheriff.
“The state granted him parole,” he snarls. “I didn’t.”
“Two Men in Town” is a stark modern day Western about a confrontation that we know is coming, a showdown we can feel from the opening moments as we glimpse, from a distance, a man smash another one’s skull in the desert along the Mexican border. Whose skull and who is smashing it is who this movie is about.
Oscar winner Forest Whitaker gives a tense, button-downed performance as Garnett, a guy who keeps his Koran with him, even at the stockyards, the only place that will hire him.
Oscar nominee Harvey Keitel is the sheriff who hasn’t forgotten the deputy Garnett murdered. Brenda Blethyn is the parole officer who just moved to the sunshine of New Mexico from Chicago.
Writer-director Rachid Bouchareb has given this tale a Western feel, a Muslim/Christian culture clash undertone and a border country illegal immigration subtext.
But he rubs edges off the characters
.
The shades of grey here may mimic real life, but that doesn’t really work for Western showdown pictures. Bouchareb gets fine performances from several wonderful, under-utilized actors, including Ellen Burstyn and Tim Guinee in smaller roles. But his morality play is too muted to work, too muzzled to have any bite.
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