![]() ![]() At a stopover on a cattle drive one day, they encounter Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her lanky, effeminate son Peter (Kodi Smitt-McPhee), who prepare and serve food to the guests. While George adopts a mannered, genteel persona, Phil, physically rigid and hard-staring, is one cigarette away from being the Marlboro Man. Adapted from Thomas Savage's 1967 novel, Campion delivers a slow, stately, and stunning depiction of how unchecked machismo has continued to impact society.īenedict Cumberbatch plays Phil Burbank, who with his brother George (Jesse Plemons) operates a successful ranch in 1925 Montana. ![]() Injecting homoeroticism into the Western genre is nothing new, with The Sisters Brothers and Brokeback Mountain being just a couple of somewhat recent examples, but the great Jane Campion's long-awaited return to features, The Power Of The Dog, feels fresh due to its fascinating tone and examination of today's hot button issue of toxic masculinity. Western Side Story - Film Review: The Power Of The Dog ★★★★1/2 Rating: R (Full Nudity|Brief Sexual Content) Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace? Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil's cowhand disciples. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form - he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter - all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. All of Phil's romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. ![]()
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