Giving the Western some swagger in 'The Harder They Fall'
ABC News
“The Harder They Fall" has all of the gunfights, train robberies, saloons, and showdowns you would expect in a Western
NEW YORK -- If you had any doubt that Jeymes Samuel, the director of “The Harder They Fall” and the British musician known as the Bullits, loves Westerns, then you haven't heard him sing Dean Martin's “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” from John Ford's “Rio Bravo.”
“When Dean Martin pops up in a movie, you know: Oh, there’s going to be a song,” Samuel says with a giant grin. “It doesn't matter if the movie is ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ he will find a way.”
Samuel tilts his head upward and lightly croons: “Coming home, sweetheart darling/ Just my rifle, my pony and me.”
“The Harder They Fall,” which is currently playing in theaters and debuts Wednesday on Netflix, is filled to its Stetson brim with affection for Westerns. It has all the gunfights, train robberies, saloons, and showdowns you would expect. But Samuel's film also dusts off many of the traditional limitations of an old genre, reinventing it for today. “The Harder They Fall” is a spirited and kinetic Black Western that swaggers to its own hip-hop beat.
