I really wanted to like this movie. The script was on the Black List, you know the one for the best un-produced screenplays. It’s very small and very indie. And usually that works for me. It’s being touted as a brilliant genre twist because it is a Southern western, whatever that means, and because its protagonists are women who kick ass. But it is just so slow and so predictable that I could barely make my way to the end.
The gist of it is that three women, two sisters and their slave (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, Muna Otaru), are left behind on a farm in South Carolina during the Civil War, when all the men are gone, dead or fighting. And a couple of rogue Yankees are raping and pillaging their way across the south out ahead of Sherman’s March to the sea. So these women are in danger and once the men have them in their sights, the ladies fight back.
I imagine there could be a good film made of this story, but this isn’t it. It’s nice to look at, and the performances are fine, but it is tedious and so stylized, it’s painful. Skip it!