Butcher’s Crossing

Grade: C+

Life in the old west often seems so simple. Small towns and saloons and blacksmiths and horses and alcohol and prostitutes – not that I’d partake in all of those things. There might be occasions where guns come out, but as long as you didn’t sass anybody, it would be all quiet on that front.

Butcher’s Crossing, set in 1874, begins with William (bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Fred Hechinger, from Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade) leaving his Harvard education in hopes of landing a herding job in the Colorado wilderness. Miller (Nicolas Cage) has had his sights set on a territory that he’s believed for a while is rich with buffalo, but the treacherous journey is very far off the beaten path. Against the advice of local man McDonald (Paul Raci from Sound of Metal), Will sets out with Miller and two other men. They start in the fall, get snowed in all winter, and are out there until the spring. It was supposed to be just a couple weeks. Nobody’s facial hair grows any more, unless they’re borrowing the razor Cage uses on his head.

Not counting his lineless cameo in The Flash, this is at least the 5th of 6 movies Nicolas Cage has out this year (I am looking forward to Dream Scenario). This isn’t even the first western he’s had released in 2023. When he makes his first appearance in Butcher’s Crossing, I hunkered down for what I thought would be another Cage phone-in. More of a presence than a performance, like when Jack Nicholson just plays Jack. But he’s better here than I anticipated, and when he inevitably freaks out…excuse me…Cages out, it’s appropriate and not out of left field.

Other traveling companions are characters who never rise above the archetypal variety. Jeremy Bobb (God’s Country, The Wolf of Wall Street) is your perpetually horny boozer. Always drinking and talking about how he wants to order up a nice whore. Xander Berkeley is your elderly, bearded, Bible-thumping, Bible-quoting, doomsday ranter. You can start to predict their dialogue. It’s not their fault. These are fine actors. It’s the way they’re written.

The movie ends with an unexpected history lesson through captions that break down for us how many buffalo there were then, how many there are now, how many are killed each year, etc. If you’re a nature lover, see it for the scenery. If you like Cage, you might be satisfied. Butcher’s Crossing is the best Nicolas Cage vehicle of the year at the moment, but that’s a bit like being valedictorian in summer school.

Grade: C+