Verdict
Summary
The movie doesn’t offer anything new; in westerns there tends to be good guys and bad guys who must settle a score by the end, and this one is no different, but the grace of the film is that it digs its heels deep into the mud and sticks to its guns without becoming sensational.
Plot: An Irish undertaker profits when outlaws take over a peaceful American frontier town, but his family comes under threat as the death toll rises.
Review: An evil man named Dutch (John Cusack) and his two cohorts ride into a little town without a sheriff, and where the local preacher sets the law. Dutch immediately senses an opportunity: He sets up a den of iniquity in town and not long after that people start getting killed from brawls and drunk and disorderliness. The town carpenter and mortician – a meek Irishman named Patrick (Emile Hirsch) – is suddenly flush with business, but at the cost of standing idly by while Dutch prospers by destroying the town. When Dutch allows – and encourages – more killings, Patrick’s conscience grates away at him, until Dutch’s men come for his wife, spurning a final stand between the meek and the mighty.
Never Grow Old is a downbeat and raw western with an unflinching performance by Cusack, who gives his role a real layer of menace and vileness. The movie doesn’t offer anything new; in westerns there tends to be good guys and bad guys who must settle a score by the end, and this one is no different, but the grace of the film is that it digs its heels deep into the mud and sticks to its guns without becoming sensational. Writer / director Ivan Kavanaugh goes for a naturalistic, human angle to the western and he has made his mark on the genre.
Never Grow Old is now playing in select theaters and on demand.