A Future Site ▼

Total Film: The Modern Guide to The Movies

Reviews

Sep 15th 2008 By Total Film

Half-brothers come to blows in a first feature from writer-director Jeff Nichols that sets three angry Cains – Son (Michael J Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) – against the four Abels their dead father had with another woman. This Biblical story is played out against a sparse Arkansas backdrop that recalls Malick’s Badlands and the work of producer David Gordon Green (Undertow and All The Real Girls, not Pineapple Express). Yet violence is used sparingly in a film that’s much more concerned with healing old wounds than creating new ones.