Richard Gray’s “The Unholy Trinity” (2024) is the blandest Western you’ll have encountered in a while. There are significant shootouts, enemies seeking to eliminate each other, stabs at mutual understanding, and an excess of action. But all of it never coheres into something properly dramatic or sufficiently moving. It’s all a flat, insipid muddle of too swiftly dealt explanations dressed up to justify a roving plot. The problem here is too much derivativeness. Too many cooks can spoil the broth, and the film is a testament to it.
In fact, Gray cannot make up his mind where to take the story or how to invest characters with certain shades that’d render them compelling. Moral tension is hinted at in spades, but the film is unable to make much of it. Instead, the heavy-lifting is left to Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson to salvage a creaky narrative. When the writing is so dull, the direction so clueless and painfully borrowed, nothing can redeem it.
The Unholy Trinity (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
We enter the film’s Montana setting in the late 1880s. Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) is locked in an emotional conversation with his father, Isaac, who is about to be hanged for his crimes. But Isaac insists to his son that he has been framed. He says he’s innocent. He exhorts that Henry embarks to root out the evil sheriff who is responsible for having everyone pin crimes against him, crimes which he’s not guilty of at all. The gullible Henry believes him readily. Instantly, he sets out to fulfil his father’s final wish. It must be mentioned that Henry had been estranged from his father. Now, he tries to leap into correct his father’s name and deliver him justice.
When he arrives in Trinity, he pounces on Gabriel Dove (Brosnan), the current sheriff. Gabriel gently explains that the sheriff whom he is actually seeking, Saul, is dead. So he must calm his raging heart. He should take a rational decision now that he knows the sought out isn’t alive. Gabriel takes Henry through what he isn’t privy to. There’s a lot the latter doesn’t know. Gabriel says the town saw his father as a villain and worshipped Saul as the hero.
So, if he tries to go against Saul’s name, a mess would be raked up. The ploy of avenging one’s father sets off a bloody, dramatic trail which is, however, barely propulsive. Instead, the events look and feel tiringly repetitive, wives and probable lovers flit by in a forgettable, mild blur. Women are made to take on some of the action and are targets themselves. They don’t hold back, firing on all cylinders with no apology.
There’s a shootout at the pub, where a woman who was trying to offer sexual favours to Henry ends up dead. Her brothers get riled up, and Henry becomes the target as well. Quickly, more threads spin into focus. A priest, St. Christopher (Jackson), informs Henry of his father’s past, the misdeeds he had committed. Christopher is an ex-slave who is seeking his share of gold. In the past, Isaac stole a lot of gold from the South and made away.
He had promised Christopher his share, but tricked him ultimately. Therefore, Christopher is still looking for the gold. Gabriel knows the hunt for gold is being dredged up. He tells Henry that the house where he lives with his wife and kids used to belong to Isaac. There have been earlier scouring attempts for the gold, but in vain. Christopher rallies the townsfolk to go to Gabriel’s house, where Henry is being sheltered.
The Unholy Trinity (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Henry execute the planned revenge?
The climax has a lot of scuffles, shootouts, and violent confrontations. There are discoveries, revelations, and anguished wild rides. One camp attacks the other, accusing the latter of complicity and evasion. There are insinuations lobbied from both sides. The clash turns bloody and brutal. There’s no reprieve or escape. That’s how it seems.
The scuffle leads to the church, where it’s just Gabriel, Henry, and Christopher. It all comes down to the three of them. The gold-theft plot gains potency. Christopher’s party has been outnumbered. Yes, plausibility is considerably stretched here. Christopher says he wants his share of the gold, refusing to part with it. He wants closure. Henry is ready to forgive him. Ultimately, Gabriel shoots Christopher dead.
In the end, a transformed, softened Henry disperses his father’s ashes. He is ready to leave. He knows he has a right to the house where the new sheriff lives. It’s his inheritance after all. But he doesn’t want it. He tells Gabriel the latter has built a life with his family there, so it should be Gabriel’s. However, the sheriff insists he stay.
The Unholy Trinity (2024) Movie Review:
Themes of retribution and letting go play out on this canvas. There’s a push-pull between wanting to strike out and resting in the shadows. How long can an individual wait before lashing out? Families and communities get entangled, but the film desists from introducing much personality or verve. There’s an overbearing staleness that drowns the film under a mess of contrivances and uninspired events.
Nothing really sticks out, as any individual quirk doesn’t register at all. The Western template may be fitted onto the film’s design, but a sustained coherence or sharpness is diluted. Where’s the tension and dramatic urgency? It’s all amiss in the film’s scheme. Rather, the film sputters out of breath right before any dramatic crest is attained. Brosnan and Jackson try valiantly to lift the film in the most wooden, static stretches, but it’s beyond rescue.
A solid Western bank on a clearly legible pattern of moral rot and ambiguity, threaded into a matrix of violence and social ills. There’s greed, corruption, and avarice of the highest order. The film dials up melodrama in patches, but even that is ill-designed. Shootouts land when there’s an emotional consequence, or when they are designed with gumption and grace and stylish sass. None of it can be found here, which lumps the killings into an indistinct blob.
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