Premiered at the Venice Film Festival September 2,2018
Winner of the Silver Lion Award for Best Director
a Jacques Audiard film
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
1851, the Sisters brothers, Eli and Charlie are both assassins who go on this long journey through the Northwest, bringing them to the mountains of Oregon.
Blaine: Producer Allison Dickey read Patrick deWitt’s book, “The Sisters Brothers”, and told her husband, John C. Reilly, that he should read it. John C. Reilly is not big on reading books. He reads movie scripts, but not books. John read and loved the book and he really got into the emotion of these characters, especially Eli. It was a compelling story and John felt connected to the Eli character. John also thought parts of the story were funny and thought it was a fresh new story for the western genre. John C. Reilly and Allison Dickey met director Jacques Audiard at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival and he was promoting his movie, “Rust and Bone”. John and Allison wanted to have lunch with Jacques and asked him if he would be interested in doing “The Sisters Brothers”. Jacques felt something like this would be a perfect opportunity to work with American actors because he has always wanted to try it out. Making a western wasn’t Jacques' interest though because he’s not a fan. Jacques decided to do “The Sisters Brothers” because he thought of it more as a period film, even though western is the only word to describe “The Sisters Brothers”. Jaques and his long time collaborator, Thomas Bidegain, worked on the screenplay. They decided to put a lot of stuff from the book into the screenplay, but only if it felt good enough for the movie.
John C. Reilly was really interested in playing Eli because he is a character with heart, but John was considered to play another character. John C. Reilly didn’t want to argue with Jacques because this was going to be his movie and he was going to bring it to life. Jacques was nice enough to give John the Eli part. Joaquin Phoenix didn’t know how the western genre worked because he has never seen a western, but he thought the script for “The Sisters Brothers” was well written and he felt that something like this would be unique and different for him to do. Jake Gyllenhaal had his eye on Jacques Audiard for a while and they would bump into each other at special events from time to time. Jacques has a great record in film because every film he has made has turned out to be successful and Jake has loved every single one of them. When “The Sisters Brothers” came along, Jacques called Jake asking if he would be interested and Jake said yes. Jake did “The Sisters Brothers” because it was a chance to work with Jacques. One of the things Jacques needed was a translator because he only speaks French and if he was going to direct a movie with American actors they needed to understand Jacques’ direction. Jacques is always pushing his actors to do their best with their performances because he wants to see if they can make the scene look good.
John Morris is the scout. He is the person a Commodore hires to travel and find the person who needs to be killed. John also has to give information to the Sisters brothers on the person they are going to assassinate. John will hold the guy for the Sisters brothers when they arrive. The film takes place during the California Gold Rush. Herman Kermit Warm is a chemist who has made a formula to find gold quicker. The Sisters brothers are supposed to kill Herman, but John Morris won’t allow that. At first, John was supposed to have Herman prepared for the Sisters brothers when they arrive, but after getting to know Herman and seeing how nice he is, John doesn’t have the heart to let a kind fella like him be killed. John and Herman have become friends and they run away together, but the Sisters brothers are tracking them down. Herman sees the good in people and he helps bring it out of them. He did it with John and he does the same with Eli Sisters. Eli is an assassin, but he has heart. The assassin thing isn’t something Eli wants to do for the rest of his life. He wants to open up a store and settle down because he knows there is more to life than killing a man. Charlie Sisters doesn’t want anything else except to be an assassin because this job is his life. Charlie killed his father when he was a kid because the father was abusive and killing him Charlie thought it would be for the best, but it wasn’t. It just made things worse because Charlie took a life and he has to live with it. Taking someone else's life can damage a man, especially at a young age. It has made Charlie a dangerous man.
A lot happens to the Sisters brothers through this journey. Eli swallows a spider in his sleep and gets sick, a bear attacks the Sisters’ camp and Charlie kills it. The Sisters brothers make a stop in a town and a woman named Mayfield puts a hit on them. The Sisters brother are outnumbered, but they are smart enough to find a way out of a serious situation no matter how bad it looks. The Sisters brothers are also fast guns. The Sisters brothers kill Mayfield and steal all the valuables in her safe. They have enough money to retire from the hitmen job, but Charlie wants to continue finding Herman. The Sisters brothers finally catch up to John and Herman, but John and Herman do a sneak attack during the night while the Sisters brothers are asleep and unarmed. The Sisters brothers call a truce with John and Herman and work together when two of the hitman, who were hired by Mayfield, show up and try to kill them all. The Sisters brothers, John and Herman all become friends and they all have the same thing on their mind, which is the future. All four of these guys are realizing that things are changing. Everything is nice, but that all ends when Charlie spills undiluted formula into the river while John and Herman are paving for gold in it. John and Herman die and the Sisters brothers get the job done of assassinating Herman, even though they weren’t trying to anymore. Charlie has his good shooting arm removed because the formula got on the arm when he spilled it. Another hit is put on the Sisters brothers by their own boss. They didn’t inform him about the mission. The Sisters brothers are being hunted down, but they manage to kill every hitman after them. The Sisters brothers have to put an end to this by killing their boss, but his time came before they had a chance to take him down. Eli punches the boss’s dead body before the casket is sealed, which is a smart move because you never know if it could be a trick just to lure in the Sisters brothers so the boss can have them killed right there. I think another reason Eli does it is because he hates the guy after putting a hit on him and Charlie. The Sisters brothers are not in trouble anymore and they don’t have to run. The both of them can finally settle down without having to worry about anything anymore. They decide to go back to the farm house they grew up in. There is a long take at the end as the camera is touring the house.
My rating on “The Sisters Brothers” is five out of five stars
