SummaryThe seven-part limited series created by Scott Frank focuses on Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), who hides out in the women-dominated mining town of La Belle, NM after betraying his mentor, the criminal outlaw Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), who is hot on heels for revenge.
SummaryThe seven-part limited series created by Scott Frank focuses on Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), who hides out in the women-dominated mining town of La Belle, NM after betraying his mentor, the criminal outlaw Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), who is hot on heels for revenge.
The series often moves at a deliberate pace, but you’ll never be bored or impatient watching it--not only because there are plenty of effective and sometimes gruesome action scenes, but also because Frank takes delicious care in writing multidimensional, irresistibly engaging characters.
Anyone pining for an honest-to-God Western with vividly mythic characters, soaring vistas and thrilling showdowns will find the seven episodes of Godless a heaven-sent, rip-roaring Thanksgiving-week feast. [13-26 Nov 2017, p.16]
Everything about Godless intrigued me. I can understand why some viewers might find it "slow," but I like the way this series takes its time and allows us to understand the characters and the setting more completely. The photography is breathtaking. The acting is superb. Jeff Daniels and Meritt Wever in particular are fantastic. Highly recommend.
Ultimately, the sheer pleasure of Godless defeats any reservations you may have about it. Daniels is both hilarious and scary, and he’s clearly having a great time pulling on his scraggly beard as this project’s ultimate villain. And there’s a long, well-staged shootout at the end that is both very-traditional-western and something totally new, because more than half the shooters are women, with guns blazing.
Godless manages to come across as both familiar and fresh. Plot lines are recognizable without becoming trite. Characters are taken to predictable extremes without sliding into caricatures.
Even if the flaws remain obvious, it’s worth following this story into the desert. There’s great acting to be found, and some thoughtful writing--and if you like sweeping panoramas of the sun setting across an untamed wild, then you’re in excellent, if heavy, hands.
When the action gets up close and personal, it helps that Godless’s cast is by and large top-notch. ... After watching more than seven hours of Godless, it’s also a little hard to understand whether Frank is paying tribute to Westerns of old or indulging in their most basic clichés just because he can.
The thrilling final battle is masterfully staged. It takes far too long to get there, though, with entire episodes in the middle of the series that seemingly could have been removed entirely.
You have to have some love of westerns to enjoy this series, but if you do, it is really great. What some call cliches, others will see as the essential archetypes of the genre (lonely widow, hunted gunman, young cocky deputy sheriff, etc.) And what some will see as slow development others, me included, find a deep and rich ability to fill in the back story of all the characters. And while the overall plot may follow some traditional paths, the individual characters and stories are individual and original. The striking moral ambiguity of the villain is a great example. Great acting by so many different kinds of characters, some of whom don't really come on scene until the end. Terrific cinematography. If John Ford were alive, he would approve.
A little long and inconsistent overall. About 3 hours of the 7 are great, the other 4 should have been cut. There are a lot of side stories that just don't go anywhere and fall flat, and fall away in the finalbuild up, which results in the ending being anti-climatic and cliche.
It's definitely one of the better Westerns to come out in recent years and features impeccable acting from a solid cast, a surprisingly decent performance from Jeff Daniels, good writing and film-worthy production **** it's just not much fun to watch.
Slow, packed with filler, this western could have been skimmed down to half the size EASILY. Main characters are uninteresting with female lead doing a solid Keanu Reeves impression the entire series. By the number Hollywood value apologist - white man bad, lesbian good, Bible nut evil! And you’ve got yourself a fairly passable, immediately forgettable, western tailored for the choosy millennial.
Oh God, I could barely make it through the first episode. What a sleepy a$$ series. Reminds me of "Lonesome Dove" in the 80s which turned me off too. You have to be a real Westerns aficionado to appreciate this series. You have to love slow pacing, scenes that take a long time to play out, and sweeping vistas of barren, steppe landscapes. This is set in the 1880s so the people are dirty and everything has a general poor-ness to it. It's all quite depressing unless, again, you're into this genre. Let's hope the new series "Dark" is better...