If a Western can still deliver that warm, gently boozy glow, the kind that sits comfortably in the stomach and maybe tickles the mind while you nurse the dregs of your drink, then Unholy Trinity is that sort of well-poured shot. Not the top shelf, mind you, but sturdy and palatable and with just enough bite to remind you why we keep returning to these dusty crossroads. Westerns, after all, are our American fables, endlessly rewritten, and here, under the steady if uninspired hand of Richard Gray, the archetypes are dusted off, creaked upright, and made to dance one more time.
But it’s Brosnan, of course, who delivers the film’s oddest grace note, a moment that ambushes you with its weary absurdity and unexpected empathy. Picture the scene: Henry, half-crazed by grief and righteousness, storms into Trinity, determined to spill blood for his father; the church is heavy with the tension of a hundred townsfolk poised on a hair-trigger. Guns bristle, the air practically crackles. And then, out in the cemetery, with accusations ricocheting like stray bullets, Brosnan’s Gabriel Dove looks at this kid, so sure, so lost, and delivers, in that honeyed Irish lilt (and with a bemused nonchalance just this side of fatherly), “If you want to shoot bullets at the headstone for the sheer poetry of it all…” It’s the sort of line that lands like ash settling after the fire: unsentimental, wryly compassionate, and utterly disarming. In a genre where confrontations usually end with bang and bluster, here’s a sheriff who offers understanding instead, a man who’s seen enough violence to recognize the impotence of it, and who, if nothing else, appreciates the put-on ceremony of grief. It’s a small, lingering surprise—a cinematic wink that reminds you: sometimes even in the middle of a firing squad, what’s said can reverberate louder than gunshots.
More surprising is Brandon Lessard, given the thankless task of anchoring the film’s emotional weight. His Henry is a wide-eyed cipher at first, playing at vengeance with his father’s ashes tucked under one arm (the stranger-than-fiction imagery: a kid carting an urn like Hamlet with Yorick, except here, Dad’s no skull, just questionable dust). Lessard’s performance lands in the sweet spot between naive and bruised, as if he recognizes the absurdity of his task even while earnestly shouldering it.
The film, as so many B-Westerns must, gives in to occasional nonsense. There’s a pig-sty demise (the animal kingdom, ever ready to tidy up loose plot threads), and the requisite “how is he still standing?” heroics, Brosnan’s first-floor leap lands with a dull, comic thud of disbelief. And the final shootout: here is where disbelief doesn’t so much need to be suspended as hoisted up by a pulley system. A band of battered has-beens and neophytes mowing down grizzled, war-hardened villains? Perhaps this is frontier justice by way of the AARP. The climax is ludicrous, grand, silly, but not without a residual charge if you’re willing to let logic ride off into the sunset.
Is it beautifully shot? To a surprising degree, yes: Montana offers soft, golden expanse and scruffy, windblown corners that the cinematography knows to linger on. The production design and costuming do the legwork, conjuring not so much authenticity as the right kind of nostalgic performance, a Western that looks like our collective memory of a Western. And the dialogue, blessedly, aims to please. Hackneyed, perhaps, but delivered with relish and even moments of sly comedy that undercut the genre’s tendency toward ponderous self-regard.
Unholy Trinity isn’t much remembered minutes after the gun smoke clears, but, as with all unambitious pleasures, sometimes its brevity is its charm. It won’t be the movie they remember from the weekend, especially with flashier fare crowding the bill. But it’s an easy watch, anchored by actors who know their craft and enlivened by the odd, inexplicable detail (has there ever been a stranger inheritance than that urn of ashes?). And if “easy” sounds like damnation by faint praise, consider the ghosts of a hundred bad Westerns haunting your streaming queue. By that company, Unholy Trinity looks positively saintly.
Let’s not oversell it. This is a movie where the dialogue outpaces the plot, the stars outshine the material, and the pleasures are modest, but real. Call it a minor miracle: an unholy trinity that gets you to smile, cheer, and roll your eyes all before credits roll. That’s an honest 90 minutes. Sometimes, it’s exactly enough.
