TALES OF LOHR: "THE THICKET"

Thoughts on Elliott Lester's shades-of-winter western

Last October, my annual visit to New York City included a screening, at the long-standing Greenwich Village independent theater Film Forum, of George Stevens’ much-beloved 1953 western Shane. The film, part of an extensive multi-week Stevens retrospective the theater was then hosting, is a frequent fixture of “best westerns of all time” lists, and seeing it on the big screen gave me even greater appreciation than before for the nuanced charisma of Alan Ladd in the title role, the stately beauties of Loyal Griggs’ Oscar-winning cinematography, and the stirring sincerity of Victor Young’s moving musical score. Shane was one of two repertory screenings I took in during my trip, which also included a 4K restoration, at the New York Film Festival, of Clive Barker’s macabre BDSM-tinged 1987 horror favorite Hellraiser. But before I secured my tickets for this pair of revivals, there were other films then screening at Manhattan-area theaters that I considered seeing during the visit (not including my planned first-night-in-town opening-weekend viewing of Joker: Folie à Deux, the theatre’s cancellation of which was an early indication to me of that movie’s impending commercial failure). One of the films I had thought about checking out, which was then showing at the would-have-been-new-to-me Angelika Film Center & Cafe, was The Thicket, a wintry western co-produced by the online TV and film streaming service Tubi, from director Elliott Lester, whose most recent feature credit was the 2017 Arnold Schwarzenegger drama Aftermath. I ultimately passed on The Thicket, and after having finally caught up with it as a streaming option this past week, I am comfortable that I chose the far better western to see in a New York theater. Despite some striking on-location cinematography and a few memorable, slightly left-of-center characters and performances, The Thicket ultimately doesn’t offer anything you haven’t seen done better in previous westerns.