Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
After 25 years, a former hired gun visits his old colleague, now a small-town sheriff. Their past relationship is explored, as is how they reflect on it in the present.
Pedro Almodóvar's queer Western short is visually sumptuous — shot in the Almería desert with lush, painterly compositions and a rich color palette that elevates the material — but the narrative feels compressed to the point of thinness. The 31-minute runtime leaves the central relationship underdeveloped, and the ending arrives abruptly without fully resolving the emotional or dramatic stakes established by the murder subplot. The performances from Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal are committed and charismatic but constrained by the brevity. As a gay Western it has novelty of premise, though the execution doesn't fully distinguish it beyond Almodóvar's signature aesthetic.