Movie Review: 'Butcher's Crossing'

Butcher's Crossing (2023)

Directed by Gabe Polsky

Written by Gabe Polsky, Liam Satre Meloy

Starring Nicolas Cage, Fred Hechinger, Xander Berkley

Release Date October 20th, 2023

Published October 17th, 2023

I think, to be as fair as possible to Butcher's Crossing, this movie isn't for me. Butcher's Crossing is a slow, agonizingly dry piece of historical fiction. It's an interesting story, how a few people managed to savage an entire species to near extinction while nearly getting themselves killed but you have to be willing to go on this rather dreary journey. It does have its temptations, this journey. The main temptation being star Nicholas Cage with a fully shaved dome and a touch of the crazy eyes. Beyond that though, the appeal of Butcher's Crossing is limited to obsessive fans of the history of the American west.

A naïve and ill-prepared Harvard drop out arrives at a fort in the west in early 1800s. Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) is a rich kid with a little of dad's money and a desire to see what the American west looks like. He's traveled to this place to meet a man who worked for his father years ago. Will hopes that this man will allow him to join one of his buffalo hunting parties as a sort of hunting tourist. The man turns him down and sends him on his way. Not one for giving up, Will seeks out a man in a saloon with a big reputation.

Miller (Nicolas Cage) is a well known buffalo hunter with a taste for blood and a gleam in his eye. Miller can see this wimp coming a mile away and he smells the kids money. Miller just happens to harbor a desire to no longer work for the hunting companies in this town, he wants to branch out on his own and all he needs is a bank roll. Miller also claims to know where he can find a seemingly endless supply of Buffalo that could be harvested, skinned and provide more money than any local hunter could possibly dream of.

Naturally, the dimwitted Harvard drop out is won over by the charismatic hunter. Once they hire a skinner, (Jeremy Bobb), they are on their way to a valley that no one but Miller believes exists. After seeming to get lost, they actually find the valley and indeed, they find a herd of buffalo unlike any that's been harvested before. It's large and for some reason, despite Miller picking them off repeatedly with a rifle, most of the herd doesn't try to leave the valley, making them easy to hunt to an almost ludicrous degree. The hunters will harvest more buffalo than they could possible skin and return to their outpost and Miller's mania for killing buffalo will eventually risk all of their lives in the harsh conditions of the Colorado territory.

This is all fine, it's professionally presented, well acted and a story worth telling. The way we nearly hunted the buffalo out of existence is a horror story and that's what Gabe Polsky is capturing in Butcher's Crossing. In many ways, I recommend the movie. But, I also recognize that it's just not a movie for me. The film is grim and minimal, it's generally unpleasant, and while the story is valuable, it's one that is better served by a Nat-Geo documentary than as a narrative movie. I can't think of an audience, other than dads obsessed with western American history, who will find anything to enjoy about Butcher's Crossing.

And I say that as a fan of Nicolas Cage and his crazy eyes. Cage is fully engaged in this material, it's a fully Cage performance. It's also a relatively straight forward Cage performance and despite his reputation, Cage is capable of being boring in the wrong movie. I won't call Cage boring in Butcher's Crossing but playing a sort of villain, sort of anti-hero character, there is a muted quality to Cage's movie star presence. As he tends to do, Cage seems to have fallen in love with his bald head in the movie and indulges in scraping his scalp with a straight razor in a way that says he wanted to play a bald character as much as he wanted to play this character.

Fred Hechinger is a cypher, a non-entity. Some of that impression of the character is intended, the character is meant to be naïve and easily led astray. His journey is that of a privileged and empty young man to one who becomes responsible for others and learns a hard and valuable lesson about the harsh American frontier. But, for me, Hechinger is a little too blank, a little too bland. The performance should be gaining steam by the end but sadly, his full arc from young dilettante to hardened and chastened man is a little undernourished.

But again, I am not saying the performances are bad, they just didn't move me as I feel they were intended to. Part of the problem is that I am just not interested in the topic and thus the movie didn't engage with me. If you are someone who enjoys this kind of historical fiction about hard men being hard men on the western frontier, firing guns, killing things, Butcher's Crossing may be just the right movie for you. For me, it was a dull slog through a story I wasn't interested in and characters I found impossible to care for.

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