Butcher's Crossing movie review (2023)

And yet, the results are far from those prospects. “Butcher’s Crossing” is unfocused, distant, and flat.     

Adapted from John Edward Williams’ same-titled novel, director Gabe Polsky's film is a conservationist narrative about man’s greed and tyranny over nature. While the Western genre has always been a handy tool for mythologizing, it can equally serve as a site to retrace past cultural wrongs (a turn Martin Scorsese attempts with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” for example). Through Williams’ impressionable eyes, Polsky aims to connect the historical near-extinction of the buffalo to a modern audience anxious about the present wave of human-influenced extinctions happening today. It’s an admirable desire that never evolves beyond basic aspirations.

When William approaches McDonald for a job, he rebukes the young man. McDonald wants to spare William from this soul-crushing trade. But William also hears about Miller (a misplaced Nicolas Cage), an accomplished hunter sporting a deep black beard, a shaved head, and a seemingly impossible dream: Nearly a decade ago, he saw a valley in the Colorado Territory chock full of buffalo. With the animal now scarce around Kansas, Miller’s vision is alluring to William. Miller just needs $500 to hire enough men—like the prickish Fred (Jeremy Bobb) and the superstitious Charlie (Xander Berkeley)—to make the expedition work. And as luck would have it, William has about $500 burning a hole in his pocket. The question, of course, is whether he can trust Miller? 

Due to the film’s curt passage of time, you continually feel that Polsky is operating with less-than-ideal constraints; the 107 minutes dedicated to the story fall woefully short of accommodating the director’s desires. The trek to Miller’s buffalo oasis is an arduous one. And yet, other than a couple of stops along the way—where young William sees how no one can be trusted—the psychological implications of wandering a vast desert expanse without water are summed up through a dreadfully edited fever dream experienced by a dehydrated William.