THE BYGONE
Directed by: Graham Philips, Parker Philips
Starring: Graham Philips, Sydney Schafer, Shaun Hatosy, Jamie McShane, Ritchie Coster, Tokala Black Elk, Jacqueline Taboni
After a disastrous visit to a local brothel, young cowboy Kip Summer comes across a distraught prostitute called Waniya and offers her a room for the night at his father's ranch. Initially wary of his hospitality, Waniya slowly warms to Kip but it isn't long before her pimp, Paris, tracks her down and violently abducts her. Despite warnings and advice not to get involved, Kip cannot let things go and searches high and low for Waniya and the man who took her…
Graham and Parker Phillips' neo-western certainly ticks all the boxes on the western genre card, while at the same time aiming a spotlight on the very real issue of sex trafficking in America.
Kip Summer has been goaded into going to a brothel to finally lose his virginity. He's nervous, and the sounds of moaning and yelling and crying from the other rooms does nothing to sooth him, so he makes to leave. However he can't help but come to the aid of a young woman being attacked by her customer. Shortly after he finds her walking in the pouring rain and offers her shelter for the night. The girl, Waniya (her brothel name is Laura), is initially very wary of a guy being nice to her (that's how she got into this mess in the first place) but slowly warms to his shy demeanor.
Kip unwittingly shows Waniya an alternative future to what was laid out before her by her pimp, Paris, but it is very difficult to escape his reach. On the way home from a drvie-in, Kip gets a flat tyre and is hijacked by Paris, beaten and left in the dirt while Waniya is taken away. Luckily for Kip, the local Sheriff comes across him the next morning.
To begin with the action is parsed out slowly, interspersed with a lot of character development. Kip and his father, Hadley, are struggling to keep the ranch running and to fend off the oil companies looking to buy up their land. Hadley's brother, Beckett, agrees to help with the financing and gets a mare that belonged to Kip's deceased mother as part of the deal. The way Beckett treats the horse tells you everything you need to know about him, and the same can be said of Kip.
There are parallels between this film and the Australian thriller, GOLDSTONE, which also dealt with criminals trafficking girls for the local workforce. However this is less a police procedural and more a love letter to the wild west. Our protagonist is not a stoic hero however, he's just a man who cannot let an injustice slide by. There is a level of banality to the evil in this film. It is just assumed that the abductions of young Native American women is just a price that needs to be paid to bring a "new" industry (oil drilling) to the area. The sheriff has a whole notice board covered in Missing Person reports that have gone unsolved and it is not until a white guy kicks up a fuss that anything starts to be done. Numerous people, including his father, uncle and the sheriff, all tell Kip to forget about it, forget about the girl and get back to his old life. But he cannot bend.
Slowly however the action starts to pick up. There is a great bar fight when Kip and Bear (a Native American who works on the ranch and has been Kip's friend since childhood) start asking too many questions. This is intercut with Waniya fending off another violent customer. As the manhunt for Paris intensifies he gets more desperate, taking his troupe of girls directly to the oil-workers mobile city, which results in a shootout with the sheriff.
From that point though the film threatens to lurch into more conventional genre, even presenting a scenario which wouldn't be out of place in a straight-up horror film. This is both good and bad for the film's pacing but I for one enjoyed it. The climax of the film gives us two villains, one who is straight out of a comic book while the other shows a certain amount of nuance and emotion in his final decisions.
THE VERDICT
If you are prepared to be patient with the story, The Bygone is worth sticking with. Much like Hell or High Water, this is a film portraying a traditional way of life in decline. It looks fantastic and has great cinematography by David J Myrick which contrasts the sweaty confines of brothels with the sprawling landscape of Oklahoma. It provides us with conventional villains and an unconventional hero - someone who is actually willing to let the police do their job, until he finally cannot. This is a very assured film from two young directors.
8 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)
THE BYGONE will be available On Demand and download across all major digital platforms – including iTunes, Amazon, Sky Store, Virgin Media, Google Play, Sony Playstation and Rakuten – from March 2nd.