Fast sell:
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood star, Emile Hirsch goes up against an extremely wicked John Cusack in a brutal and brilliant old-school Western.
Key talent:
Cast:
Emile Hirsch (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Into The Wild)
John Cusack (1408, High Fidelity)
Déborah François (The Page Turner, Female Agents)
Danny Webb (Alien³, Valkyrie)
Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Under the Skin, Lead Balloon)
Tim Ahern (Lillyhammer, McMafia)
Director:
Ivan Kavanagh (The Canal)
Executive producers: James Atherton, Jan Pace (Starred Up, I Am Not a Serial Killer)
Synopsis:
Debauchery. Greed. Murder. Welcome to Garlow. This once-peaceful frontier town has become a den of vice after vicious outlaw Dutch Albert (John Cusack) and his gang arrived— and began gunning down their opposition.
Undertaker Patrick Tate (Emile Hirsch) must now choose between the blood money he makes burying the murderers’ victims and the threats he and his family face in this intense and gritty western.
We like it because:
If you’re in the mood for an old-school style Western, brought bang up to date with plenty of blood and bluster, then you’ve come to the right saloon. Writer/director Ivan Kavanagh, the man behind the acclaimed 2014 chiller The Canal, delivers a handsomely mounted meditation on good versus evil in the old West, that would make Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood proud. As one critic noted, “Never Grow Old could have been made decades ago, and I mean that as a compliment.”
Kavanagh has managed to assemble a superb cast to realise his vision – fresh from his scene-stealing turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Emile Hirsch is on fine form here as an opportunistic undertaker; and screen legend John Cusack, beloved for his Eighties comedies, is almost unrecognisable as a man in black, giving perhaps his best performance for well over a decade. Award-winning French actress Deborah Francois, meanwhile, is outstanding as Hirsche’s long-suffering wife.
Fans of Western classics The Unforgiven, The Hateful Eight and The Proposition will have a blast with Never Grow Old, a gritty, witty oater that doesn’t reinvent the wagon wheel but takes it for a damn good spin.