Screenwriter Brian Duffield’s western screenplay, about “a woman whose big victory was going to be in making a stand”, appeared on the “black list” of most promising unproduced scripts in 2011 and was subsequently slated to be directed by Lynne Ramsay. But when Ramsay and original star Jude Law left the project (the specifics of their departure remain unclear), Gavin O’Connor took over the directorial reigns, with Bradley Cooper stepping in to replace Law, only to be replaced again by Ewan McGregor. Sadly, it’s impossible to look at the workaday finished film without wondering what Ramsay might have made of it; while O’Connor handles the (rewritten) material deftly enough, and the production values are sturdily handsome, there’s very little about it that’s remarkable.
Portman is solid as the resourceful Jane, whose husband (Noah Emmerich) brings the threat of home invasion to their door after a run-in with the murderous Bishop boys. Joel Edgerton is the old flame to whom Jane reluctantly turns in her hour of need; Ewan McGregor is the fiendish John Bishop, who looks incongruously like a younger version of Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood. The story plays with our expectations and allegiances as it builds toward a Straw Dogs showdown involving booby-trapped yards and shot-gunned walls. It’s all perfectly passable, but rather perfunctory, a word that could never be applied to one of Ramsay’s films.
