‘The Thicket’ Review: Tubi or Not Tubi, This Is a Great, Gloomy Western
In the highly competitive world of streaming services, Tubi has made a name for itself. It’s a weird name, sure, but it’s a name. Tubi is free with commercials, which companies like Netflix probably think is madness, but more importantly it’s packed with movies and TV shows that pretty much all the other streamers don’t give a crap about.
You can find big releases licensed from major studios, but you can get those anywhere. Try finding the 1988 Canadian TV series “T and T” — about Mister T working as a legal aid — on Netflix or Disney+. They would never. Tubi is the equivalent of the quirky mom and pop video store located just down the street from a parasitic Blockbuster that can’t quite put them out of business, because Blockbuster doesn’t carry esoteric oddities like the 1990 ultra-low budget compilation video “That’s Action” hosted by Robert Culp.
Tubi has released quite a lot of original movies already, but most of them feel like they belong on the bottom shelf of that mom and pop store. Even their remake of “Terror Train” looks like it was dashed off in a week or less (their “Terror Train 2” isn’t bad though). So a movie like “The Thicket” is, for better or worse, a step in a classier direction. It’s a stylish and dour new western with an impressive cast, based on a novel by celebrated author Joe R. Lansdale, and it’s even getting a theatrical release, which is not unlike a seal of quality.
“The Thicket” stars Esmé Creed-Miles (“Hanna”) and Levon Hawke (“Blink Twice”) as Lula and Jack Parker, whose parents have just died of smallpox, and are en route to live with their grandfather when they stumble across Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis), a wanted fugitive with a gang of ruffians. Bill kills their grandfather, kidnaps Lula and leaves Jack for dead, so he buys the services of a world-weary bounty hunter, Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage), to track Lula down and save her.
The Western genre is as thoroughly worn as any, and unique plots are hard to come by. “The Thicket” has a lot in common with films like “The Searchers” and “True Grit,” where young idealists team up with grizzled old gunmen to rescue the innocent and/or get revenge on a murderer. Along the way harsh lessons will be learned. Heck, even the idea of a revisionist Western is so old now that it’s no longer revisionist. If you start watching a Western, you should expect to see familiar Western stuff. The power is in the telling, not necessarily in what’s told.
And that’s where “The Thicket” is thorniest, poking holes in familiar moments, drawing blood where we don’t expect it. Peter Dinklage, who co-produced the film, brings an odd and fascinating cynicism to his mercenary figure. His resumé is unusually diverse and his problem-solving skills range from merely violent to insultingly profane. But after he besmirches the honor of a sex worker, Jimmy Sue (Leslie Grace, “In the Heights”), to gain the upper hand in an argument, he does at least apologize. He’s a pragmatic scoundrel, not a total cad.
But “The Thicket” belongs to Juliette Lewis, from one end to the other. Lewis plays Cut Throat Bill with a froggy drawl and a slashed up face, and no clue whatsoever how to identify. Vocabulary like “trans” and “genderfluid” wouldn’t have been available to Bill 100 years ago in the next-to-nowhere side of the world, and so they follow their gut and act on their impulses. Bill is curious if they’re pretty, but eschews all femininity. Bill robs a trading post and forces the man at the counter to suck on their licorice stick. Bill forces Lula to push away the markings of her gender, and although Bill saves her from his lascivious underlings, they do insist on a terse, almost perfunctory snuggle.
It’s a complex role and it brings up an interesting conversation about representation, as a queer character in a period piece where their identity would be hard to discuss in dialogue, and as an unequivocal villain who nevertheless has tragic qualities and moral complexity. “The Thicket” approaches Cut Throat Bill like just one character in its narrative, not the whole point of the film. Bill may not be a “positive” portrayal but one could argue that they’re a multi-dimensional figure, worthy of deeper analysis at least.
Elliott Lester (“Aftermath”) directed “The Thicket” and he’s got a firm handle on this material. Guillermo Garza’s cinematography is frosty, damn near on the brink of death, and the rest of Lester’s film is tweaked to match. There’s a sense of wretchedness in the air. You get the distinct sense that the world of this movie smells. It’s populated by characters who have adapted, not always well, to live in it. And the cast is punctuated by unexpected performances from the likes of Macon Blair, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Andrew Schultz, and James Hetfield (yes, that James Hetfield, from Metallica).
“The Thicket” ends as it probably must, and leaves the audience with a sense of sad finality. Even the characters whose endings are arguably happy don’t look very happy about it. It’s a bleak time, a bleak place, and it’s full of bleak people, and it’s hard to judge because we currently live in a bleak time, in a bleak place, with bleak people of our own. “The Thicket” is an awful story, in a great way. It’s a remarkable film from an eccentric streamer.
“The Thicket” is now playing in select theaters.
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