Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ on Hulu, a Frustrating Western That Keeps Nicolas Cage On a Tight Leash

If you’re thirsty to see Nicolas Cage half-assedly tackle a role that’s like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now crossed with Judge Holden, then Butcher’s Crossing (now streaming on Hulu) might be your bottle of hooch. I know – I’ve colored your perception with the phrase “half-assedly,” but that’s how Cage tends to work for some of these lower-budgeted money gigs; he surely gives more effort to the Dream Scenarios and Pigs on his docket than this or, say, Willy’s Wonderland. And in this case, it’s kind of no fault of his own, since the screenplay doesn’t quite have enough oomph to push him over the top into Cage Crazyville. It’s directed and co-written by Gabe Polsky, who adapts the novel of the same name by John Edward Williams, deemed by some as a predecessor to the brutal Westerns of Cormac McCarthy, whose movie adaptations, ironically, seem to have inspired this film. And if Butcher’s Crossing feels a little too familiar at times, and a little too thematically scattershot, it may have enough redeeming qualities to warrant a watch.

BUTCHER’S CROSSING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I don’t think Will Andrews (Fred Hechinger) really knows what he wants or what he’s doing. He’s following a vague sense of a need for a grand masculine adventure, perhaps, something beyond his clean, privileged (and likely moneyed) background, which sent him to Harvard but didn’t satisfy him. He’s soft as a kitten’s tummy when he moseys his horse and cart into Kansas, specifically Butcher’s Crossing, a frontier town built on the back of the buffalo-hide trade. He’s the eagerest of beavers with money in his pocket and a naif’s stupid grin on his face. Compare that to the rest of the men in town, who look like they’re made of creased leather and have hands that have never known the existence of a decent moisturizer. It’s 1874.

Will’s first stop is to see hide trader Charlie (Paul Raci), who shoos our boy away like a puppy sniffing his stew. And so Will sidles on up to Miller (Cage), a tall, bald-headed drink of water in buffalo fur. He needs a financier for his journey to Colorado, where he says that the bison herds are so dense you can walk on top of them. Now, Miller might be chasing a figment, so the only way to get the 500 or 600 bucks he needs is to compromise and take a greenhorn like Will along to find himself – or maybe find something godawfully traumatic, although they aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s a deal. They’ll be joined by Miller’s one-handed ol’ coot of a compatriot, Charlie (Xander Berkeley), and an ace of a hide-skinner, Fred (Jeremy Bobb), and you’ve got yourself a crew stupid enough to trek god knows how far and long to chase the El Dorado of buffalo conglomerations. Before they leave, we’re given another scene demonstrating Will’s inexperience: He hooks up with Francine (Rachel Keller), a prostitute who’s keen on him and takes him back to her place. “I have the only rug in town,” she says. And just as she climbs on top of his lap, Will chickens out and R-U-N-N-O-F-Ts.

As the trek to the fabled holy bison land reaches the stage where they might be lost and hallucinating without enough water, the ordeal of it all brings out the clashing dynamics of these men. Miller is the crazed visionary, like a cult leader without much of a following. Charlie might be his only true believer, but he’s also a superstitious ol’ coot of a drunkard. Fred’s just an employee around here, in it for the monthly pay and not a back-end deal on a would-be bounty arousing his skepticism; he’s also the designated asshole of the bunch, akin to bullying Charlie and stirring shit where it doesn’t need to be stirred. And then there’s Will, who after two days has a grisly saddle rash on the inside of his thighs, with Francine not here to massage aloe into his skin. The trip sucks for a while, then gets better, then gets wild, then gets insane, then gets cold, then gets tedious, then gets even more insane, and… well, you probably saw all this coming even before Miller uttered something about Indian burial grounds, uttering it too late for Will or Fred or Charlie to do anything about it. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Will Miller’s symbolic attempt to pull a steamship over a mountain eventually find that ship wrecking itself on the rapids, as in Fitzcarraldo? (NO SPOILERS.) Will Butcher’s Crossing transcend the mediocrity of recent Westerns like News of the World or Hostiles? (Nope.)

Performance Worth Watching: I love Nicolas Cage. I’m among his greatest apologists. But there are moments in Butcher’s Crossing when he appears to be trying to fill in the gaps of an underwritten character by indulging eccentricities – say, a shot of him dragging a dry razor blade over his bald skull, or channeling Col. Kurtzisms so blatantly, it feels more like plagiarism than homage. The performance feels more external than internal, a sign of a screenplay in need of another draft or two. 

Memorable Dialogue: Fred gives Will a skinnin’ lesson, and you don’t know if he’s pulling a fast one on the new guy or not: “I always keep the balls. They’re good eatin’ and they put starch in your pecker.”

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: Butcher’s Crossing is stuffed to the gills with classical Western tropes: Gorgeous landscape cinematography, motley crew on a quest for fool’s gold, a Manifest Destiny story of greed and folly, depiction of troublesome politics, manly men doing masculine shit, etc. It follows a familiar tack where a crazed quasi-visionary leads his underlings into hallucinogenic madness, and meets all the narrative expectations that come with darkly psychological excursions into the wild to slaughter creatures that are potent symbols reflecting the ghastly sins of American White men. Knowing the fate of the American bison – near extinction, with a population rebound shepherded by Native Americans – we’re damn well certain this isn’t going to be a Shakespearean comedy with a happy ending.

Cage’s recent roles have ranged from low-budget genre/paycheck gigs to prestige roles that’ll rank among his better artistic efforts (of which there are many). His work on Butcher’s Crossing is smack in the middle of that spectrum, yet there’s no denying that his presence elevates the proceedings from forgettable to watchable. Polsky’s direction is consistent but unremarkable and, contrary to the film’s main – if frustratingly unfocused – ecological, exploitationist themes, he never truly establishes nature as a force to be reckoned with, spiritual or otherwise. There’s mention of wolves and Indians, but they never feel like a truly existential threat, and the foreboding woods and desert plains are a postcard backdrop for the mundane psychological journey of Will, a bland and ill-defined protagonist. Even the inevitable destruction of minds and souls at the climax is rote and disappointing, an egregious unforced error when Cage leads your cast. When you have Hollywood’s loosest nut at your disposal and you don’t get the most from him, well, that’s a paddlin’.

Our Call: Butcher’s Crossing will be passable for Cage and/or Western completists only. The rest of us would be wise to SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.