The Claim

The powerful baron (Peter Mullan) of a High Sierras township sees his past come back to haunt him and his livelihood yanked out from under him as the railroad builds away from his town in this tightly wound melodrama set during the twilight of the Gold Rush. Director Michael Winterbottom achieves an almost corporeal sense of time and place in bringing his broad vision to the screen. However, Nastassja Kinski does little but cough and hack as the now-dying wife Mullan abandoned 18 years before; Sarah Polley (Go, The Sweet Hereafter) is undercooked as the daughter he didn't know he had; and most of the characters' motives go woefully unexplored, especially when it comes to understanding why Mullan self-destructs rather than becoming a major player in the new town being built in the valley where the train will run through. If we're not allowed to understand these people, how can we be expected to care how things turn out for them? Not a necessary purchase. (R. Blackwelder)