THE UNHOLY TRINITY: At Least Someone's Still Making Westerns

THE UNHOLY TRINITY (Blu-ray)

2024 / 95 min

Warner Bros

#InPartnershipwithWB

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Buckaroo😽

We don’t get a lot of westerns these days, so if nothing else, we can appreciate movies like The Unholy Trinity keeping the torch burning. 

Not that it does anything to breathe new life into the genre. Despite a couple of marquee names above the title, the movie came-and-went in theaters nearly unnoticed. And creatively, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Some impressive Montana location work notwithstanding, The Unholy Trinity is watchable but nothing remarkable, kind of like director Richard Gray’s last film (also a western), Murder in Yellowstone City.

In this one, Henry (Brandon Lessard) is young man out to avenge the execution of his father, Isaac Broadway (Tim Daly), who claimed he was framed by Saul Butler, the sheriff of Trinity. Though inexperienced, Henry travels to the town intent on shooting Butler, fulfilling a promise he made just before Isaac was hanged. But it turns out Butler is already dead and has since been replaced by a new sheriff, Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan).

Henry was promised ice cream, but it soon became obvious none was coming.

At this point, a lot of additional plot (maybe too much) is thrown into the film. It so happens that Isaac wasn’t a saint and most of the town hated him, especially St. Christopher (Samuel L. Jackson), who once partnered with Isaac for a gold theft but was later screwed over. Now he believes the stolen gold is buried somewhere in town. Meanwhile, Gabriel takes Henry under his wing, protecting him from a band of angry miners after the kid kills a couple of them in self-defense. There’s also a posse forming to track down a Blackfoot woman named Running Cub (Q’orianka Kilcher), believed to be the one who shot Butler.

These concurrent plotlines are rendered a bit more murky by additional developments and characters, some relevant, others kind of superfluous. But there’s some decent action here and there, which of course culminates in a climactic shoot-out. This is when Henry goes from gullible rube to fighting by Gabriel’s side faster than it takes to reload a six-shooter, reflective of a screenplay that’s far more committed to fully developing the Gabriel and St. Christopher characters than its main protagonist. And if I were lucky enough to land Brosnan and Jackson in those roles, I’d probably do the same thing. Their performances are easily the best part of the movie, while Lessard is merely adequate.

Elsewhere, The Unholy Trinity is technically proficient and well paced, though it plays like one of those movies destined to be something you stumble upon while searching a streaming service with no particular title in-mind. But while there’s nothing memorable or distinctive about the film, it’s a serviceable enough little western if you keep your expectations in check.