The opening shots of Alex and Andrew Smith's Winter in the Blood offer a pretty credible impression of a Western by Clint Eastwood, with wide-angle wintry stark imagery of a ranch, cutting to a cowboy and his horse, half-draped in shadow. And then the ugly truth kicks in: it's all just a dream in the hung-over brain of Virgil First Raise (Chaske Spencer), who awakens in a ditch. The young Native American anti-hero at the center of this feverish tale, based on a seminal 1974 novel by the late James Welch, is about to embark on another day of boozing, violence, and random visions. The line between reality and hallucination is blurred both for Virgil and the viewer in this audacious, funny, and often tender film. Spencer, best known from the Twilight series, delivers a brutally honest performance as the dissolute Virgil, a drunk whose wife (Julia Jones) has run off with his keepsake rifle while he is left to stumble through the days at home and his visits to the seedier side of a small Montana town. The Smith brothers don't distinguish between the real and surreal—or even the past and present. Virgil, carrying lingering grief over family deaths, as well as the pain of an identity crisis, just spins through his memories, fantasies, and bizarre adventures (some featuring a crazy con man, played by David Morse). A fine supporting cast—including Gary Farmer, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Saginaw Grant, and Richard Ray Whitman—join Virgil on his jumbled vision quest, a journey to knowledge through the back alleys of a nightmare. Recommended. (T. Keogh)
Winter in the Blood
Kino Lorber, 98 min., not rated, DVD: $29.95, Jan. 20 Volume 30, Issue 2
Winter in the Blood
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