Review: Place of Bones – “a solid, interesting spin on the Western”

Directed by Audrey Cummings
Starring Heather Graham, Brielle Robillard, Tom Hopper, Corin Nemec

I’m a sucker for a Western, and it’s not a genre we see so much of these days – it has fallen far from its ruling the box office roost perch of the 1940s and 50s – but every now and then something interesting-looking comes along. In the case of Place of Bones, we get a film very much driven by the two main female leads, mother Pandora (Heather Graham) and daughter Hester (Brielle Robillard), still something unusual for the Western genre even today (bar a few notable exceptions).

The two live in extreme isolation, on a remote, failing farm (Pandora insists that the soil will return to its previous fruitful nature and God will provide), young Hester is understandably perhaps upset about their lack of interaction with anyone else, not even taking the long trip to the nearest small town anymore (we get hints and flashes of previous events, indicating there may be solid reasons Pandora doesn’t want to go to the town).

As the film opens we see Hester, seemingly pretty innocent, perhaps even naïve (understandable, given being raised in such isolation), tending to her father’s grave. It’s actually quite a tender, even sweet moment, the daughter trying to keep her deceased father in her thoughts, but it also serves to doubly reinforce how alone the two women are. It’s not just the physical distance between them and any other settlement, they no longer even have the father/husband around, usually a pretty pivotal figure in the Western, and normally pretty important in this era where women were often not seen as capable.

Except Pandora, despite her god-fearing ways and clear desire to keep teaching her daughter how to behave properly (even correcting her grammar, reminding her that just because there are no others around doesn’t excuse her for being lazy with her learning and erudition), is obviously capable of taking care of them both, even when their quiet life is threatened by the arrival of a badly injured man, who they feel they have no choice but to take in and tend to.

The man, Calhoun (Corin Nemec) turns out to be a violent armed robber, his saddlebags filled with ill-gotten gains from a bank robbery. Pandora is already suspicious of him because of his serious gunshot wound (one leg is shattered by heavy calibre bullets), and on learning that he not only robbed the bank, but then turned on his own gang afterwards in order to secure all of the loot for himself, she realises just how dangerous he could be. And that there will be even more danger to come, because there are going to be others looking for them, placing her and Hester in the middle of a potential battle not of their choosing.

The film recalls elements of the unusual 1970s Clint Eastwood Western flick, The Beguiled, although clearly made on a much, much smaller budget. That lack of budget may mean we don’t get a lot of the usual fast horse chases and shoot-outs the genre is famed for, it has to conserve its powder to use those more action-driven scenes sparingly (but pretty effectively). This leaves much of the rest of the run-time filled primarily with the interaction between Pandora, Hester and Calhoun, with the pressure slowly building as they know someone nasty is going to be following his bloody trail.

While not genius, this is a solid, interesting spin on the Western, with the two women in particular front and centre – the men feel far more peripheral here, mostly there to drive events, while it is the women who are the real, solid characters. Pandora, for all her upright nature, reveals an absolutely iron will to defend her daughter, and that she’s more than capable of doing it, while Robillard’s young Hester can be seen developing quite clearly from the innocent girl visiting her father’s grave at the start), and there are some (perhaps too late in the day) hints of something more to the pair than you might expect. A decent, solid-enough Indy Western with a strong female lead.

Place of Bones is available now from Signature Entertainment on digital platforms.