Old Henry (2021)

Escaping the past

Written & Directed by: Potsy Ponciroli

With: Tim Blake Nelson as Henry, Scott Haze as Curry, Gavin Lewis as Wyatt, Trace Adkins as Al, Stephen Dorff as Ketchum, Richard Speight Jr. as Dugan’ Max Arciniega as Stilwell, and Brad Carter as Branigan.

Old Henry postulates that Sheriff Pat Garrett did not murder Billy the Kid (Henry McCarty) at Pete Maxwell’s house in Fort Sumner New Mexico on July 14th, 1881. He aided the Kid escape into a new life under his real name.

It is 1906 here. In that year HMS Dreadnought is launched, engendering a naval race between Britain and Germany. Traian Vuia achieves an unassisted takeoff in a heavier-than-air powered monoplane. Cunard liner RMS Lusitania is launched in Glasgow. She will be torpedoed and sunk by U boat 20 on the 7th May 1915, ushering in a new era of industrial violence.

In the hill country of East Oklahoma widower Henry McCarty struggles on his hard scrabble farm while raising his son and attempting to escape the memory of his violent youth.

Twenty-five years ago he’d been a Regulator (read: hired gun) in the infamous Johnson County New Mexico range war. He was the most famous of them all. Billy the Kid, 21 men dead for everyone of his 21 years, so so the story went. His attempts at reform have not relieved him of his skills as a pistoleer, however. 

Skills he will need, for this is wild country, True Grit country, where a man carries justice on his hip, thanks to Sam Colt. Henry is a man of grit. Old Henry’s humanity will carry his life full circle, but not without some brutal violence.

Tim Blake Nelson gives a quiet performance as Henry. He handles a sixgun like it is part of his hand. He takes careful aim before pulling the trigger and never shoots from the hip. He hits what he is shooting at more often than not.

Stephen Dorff as Ketchum, the leader of a band of bank robber is a cheerful killer, in need of killing himself. Henry has something he wants and he’ll do whatever necessary to get it.

Scott Haze is Curry, a flesh and blood ghost from Henry’s dead past. It turns out his past is not dead. It’s not even past.

Potsy Ponciroli’s direction and screenplay displays a real feel for the time and place. The dialogue rings true without any of the Hollywood posturing the burdens most of today’s westerns.

The story seems to have more in common with Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs than a silly, pretentious western by Quentin Tarantino or Kevin Costner.

Henry’s fate put me in mind of a line from another western. ”There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks.”