Child, in this world, no one can protect anyone, the sooner you realize this, the better.
From the perspective of the end of this movie, it is more like a fable, about war, about the hatred, revenge, and retribution it brings.
The director hired two Irishmen to play a Western movie in the United States, which shows that this is a different kind of Western movie.
The film's story setting seems to be a simple revenge hunt, but the background of the times is chosen three years after the end of the American Civil War.
The identities of the two protagonists are absolutely opposite.
Liam Neeson plays Carver, the former Confederate Colonel who seeks revenge, and Pierce Brosnan plays the former Confederate Captain Gideon who was hunted down.
Carver hired four men to hunt down Gideon with him. The beginning of the film was a sniper on Gideon.
A group of people chased from the cold snowy mountains to the barren grassland, and from the barren grassland to the hot desert. In the pursuit of revenge, the hired people died one by one, and gradually the entanglement of the two protagonists was revealed.
But based on such a character identity setting, it is not just the entanglement between the two protagonists, but the entanglement between the two sides of the American Civil War. The apparent reconciliation after the war is by no means as calm as it seems.
Carver put down his gun and chose to live a stable life. It was still inevitable that his wife and children would be buried in a sea of flames. Although this was not Gideon's original intention, he indirectly caused this tragedy.
So there was this vendetta, which seemed to be a continuation of the tragedy of the war.
But is Gideon really the culprit in this tragedy? When he asked his subordinates "you said that there was no one in the house", and the subordinates just replied coldly, "They are just Southerners", he should understand what the war will bring in the end, and he threw it away with a soaring flame on his back. He took off his gun and took off his military uniform.
But this did not prevent the generation of hatred. In other words, in the end, the war will always make innocent people pay a painful price.
Carver could not avoid being liquidated even if he put down his weapon, and although Gideon threw away his gun, he could not escape the condemnation of his own conscience and Carver's pursuit.
In the last duel between the two in the desert, they each exchanged the most important things at the time. Gideon exchanged the horse for the bullet, and Carver exchanged the gun for the water.
But they finally reconciled.
From beginning to end, although Gideon was hunted down, he still had the upper hand all the way. It was destined that Carver would not be able to avenge this revenge. "I think you should make the decision." He also couldn't accept this kind of "charity" revenge. , So he failed to fire this shot.
Some people say that the reconciliation between the two is like the ending between Xiao Feng’s father and Murong Fu’s father in Tianlong Babu. "Being a Buddha on the spot" or something.
As for Carver and Gideon, there is too much helplessness no matter how they look at each other, whether it is staring at each other with expressionless faces or drifting away after reconciliation.
The director used a Western film to analyze the war in this way. Although it is not necessarily successful, it is intriguing enough.
View more about Seraphim Falls reviews
