Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) finally arrives at Butcher’s Crossing, a fur outfit run by the crochety McDonald (Paul Raci) in a small Colorado settlement.  With dreams of seeing the Great American West, Will helps to fund Miller’s (Nicolas Cage) expedition to a faraway ridge where thousands of buffalo are rumored to roam, far from the thinning herds closer to the town.  Rounding out the team is Charlie (Xander Berkeley) on the wagons and provisions and Fred (Jeremy Bobb), the skinner. The outfit follows Miller up the mountains to the valley where the dangers of the terrain, the wildlife, and the violent nature latent inside of them all pose a threat to the success of the hunt. 

Gabe Polsky, for his first narrative effort, delivers Butcher’s Crossing to Saban Films from a script he adapted with Liam Satre-Meloy from the John Williams’ novel of the same name.  Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, the 105-minute western is a character study of greed and obsession that features some beautiful landscapes shot by David Gallego and a reliable score from Leo Birenberg.  Shot in Montana on land owned by the Blackfeet, there is a lot of upsetting imagery during the buffalo hunt and though the title cards at the conclusion of the film inform that the animals were all humanely cared for, it can still be a punishing ordeal to witness. 

Structurally, Butcher’s Crossing is an ensemble piece, and while it works well for the narrative, the brief runtime does not allow for the characters to really stew and develop.  Looking first at Will, our entry into the story, he is a soft-handed, Ivy League dropout with aspirations about frontier life, claiming that he is on a search for God in nature.  Hechinger does well in the role of the outsider, and while the script does not punch down exceptionally hard on the city mouse, he does not flinch at the humiliation and frustrations that Will experiences and gives an impassioned performance.  Having the most to learn, he grows the most of the four men on the mountain, but the script does not dig deep enough to really give what should be a juicy role enough to explore.  There are flashes of this as Will furiously scrubs buffalo blood off of himself in the stream after a kill – a Macbeth-ian admission of guilt and shame – but the script does not allow him to come to too much of a resolution, nor does it punish him enough for his disillusions. 

Opposite Will is Cage’s Miller, bearded chin and bald-headed, obsessed with killing buffalo.  Butcher’s Crossing has the trappings of a prestige role for the seemingly constantly working actor, and to Cage’s credit he treats the role as such, but the film does not give much definition to his character, so it is hard for audiences to want to sit for any extended period of time with him.  There are no two ways about it, this film features a gratuitous amount of animal death, and though the title cards at the end of the film explain the necessity of showing Miller shooting buffalo after buffalo, it does not change how uncomfortable those sequences are.  As with Will, the script does Miller a disservice in not explaining why he is so crazy about killing these animals, almost on a deeply personal, vengeful level.  Capitalism is of course the guiding star, but up on the mountain and even beforehand, Miller has very little care about the money.  Sure, the topic is broached and there is bragging about how this will be the biggest haul the town has ever seen, but there is a key bit of backstory missing that would help us to better, not relate, but understand Miller. 

Tempting fate, the party stays on the mountainside a little too long and a winter storm comes through, blocking their path back home until the spring thaw.  It is in these long, dark, and cold winter months that the simmering feud between the devout Charlie and the boorish Fred finally boils over.  Throughout their journey, Fred had bristled against everyone in the party between his crude humor and arrogant atheism, only Miller seemed to be able to let it roll off of him.  Eventually, Charlie begins to poison the food that he serves Fred, but the dose is too small and the man only becomes violently ill. Once that bout passes, Fred is determined to make his way through the melting snow, but not before first beating Charlie to death.  It puts the remaining trio in a pretty impossible situation; down one person already it will be difficult to bring to town any of the furs, but how much longer can they trust Fred?  They choose to have Fred drive the cart, but on a smaller accent, the overloaded wagon detaches from the horses and careens quickly into the canyon.  Fred is lost, but more importantly to Miller, the load is lost, too. 

When they arrive in town, the place is all but abandoned. Seeking McDonald, the man has become even more of a recluse now that business has dried up and his hunting outfit has become unsustainable.  The people have moved on, just like they did with beaver hats some years prior, now everyone that wants a Buffalo robe has one.  It’s a classic tale of greed, and while the overhunting of the Buffalo is an unfortunate fact of American History, just seeing Miller rage about and burn whatever inventory was left really highlights the senselessness of it all. To be frank, it is rather disgusting.  Sure, that is the point of the film, but the script lets everyone off far too easily to help audiences justify even just sitting and watching these acts represented on screen.

In its weight class, Butcher’s Crossing is an incredible film that captures the tone and itches at the dark nature of obsession.  Without the backing knowledge of the novel on which it is based, it is hard to say exactly how close of an adaptation the film is, but one can imagine that the freedom that the page provides allows for much more introspection than is portrayed on screen helping to better color in the motivations of these men, specifically Miller.  The brief runtime seems to do the film a disservice as there is so much additional danger that is set up in the first act that never quite pays off; the indigenous people taking revenge on the hunters, the disrespect the party shows for setting camp on the indigenous burial ground. It all teases at a much more traditionally bombastic film, and while it should be admired that Polsky took a more meditative and psychological approach to the narrative, it was not allowed to go deep enough to truly be effective.