Connaught Cinema
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Jane Campion
Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst
Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil's romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter - all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form - he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil's cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?
★★★★★ The Power of the Dog is a made with artistry and command: it is one of Jane Campion’s best. The Guardian
★★★★★ Cumberbatch makes every moment he’s onscreen mesmerizing—entertaining and terrifying at the same time LarsenOnFilm
★★★★★ The game of wits between Phil and everyone else is a chilling one to watch RogerEbert.com
BBFC Insight: moderate injury detail, sex references, discrimination, language, threat
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