“There is only brutality here.” This is a line from a letter that a U.S. Army captain, played by Lucas Neff, writes to his loved ones back home, midway through the new Netflix miniseries American Primeval.
The show mixes historical figures with fictional ones, placing them together in the Utah Territory circa 1857.
But it’s the closest American Primeval comes to offering some relief from the misery.
Here, she’s mostly just required to suffer stoically, which she can do, but it seems an utter waste of her.
All six episodes of American Primeval are now streaming on Netflix.
“This place is filled with violence. “”.
A U appears in this line of a letter. S. . The new Netflix miniseries American Primeval begins with an army captain (played by Lucas Neff) writing to his loved ones back home. Even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the show was written by Mark L., the screenwriter of The Revenant, it’s an unfortunate statement. Smith. . Smith’s writing frequently confuses suffering with profundity, and it appears that he enjoys coming up with gory ways to kill characters more than he does making them compelling enough for readers to care about their deaths.
The program places both fictional and historical characters in the Utah Territory around 1857. Although it’s unclear if Sara’s husband is anticipating or even wanting them to arrive, we start with Sara (Betty Gilpin) and her son Devin (Preston Mota) traveling west to get back in touch with him. Fur trapper Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham) tells Sara that such a journey is at best reckless and will probably result in her and Devin’s deaths. Bridger has established a prosperous economic center out of a fort he named for himself. Sara joins a larger group heading in the same direction after mysterious mountain man Isaac (Taylor Kitsch) declines to be their guide. This group includes a young Mormon couple named Jacob (Dane DeHaan) and Abish (Saura Lightfoot Leon), who are keen to connect with Brigham Young (Kim Coates) and his flock. The action quickly becomes graphically violent, and the story is soon divided between Isaac’s attempts to guide Sarah, Devin, and Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), a mute girl, to safety and the growing hostilities between the Army, Young’s militia, and Shoshone tribe members.
It’s not particularly humorous when Whigham plays a sardonic character and when Bridger repeatedly gives wise counsel to those who disregard it, always at their own risk. The American Primeval, however, is the closest thing to providing some respite from the suffering. Everything else, such as numerous sexual assaults, a close-up of a character being scalped, and other instances of graphic violence, is just brutality for the sake of being brutal. Working with Kitsch for the fifth time since the Friday Night Lights TV series, director Peter Berg is responsible for the violence. Berg has a talent for illustrating action in unique and unusual ways, such as how a volley of arrows sounds and looks like a post-apocalyptic event.
editor’s selections.
However, Berg’s technical skill is unable to improve the content, which is so weak that it leaves even a cast this talented feeling somewhat lost. Starz’s Three Women showed how powerful Gilpin can be, even in a project with subpar writing, just a few months ago. She can endure the stoicism that is largely required of her here, but it seems like a complete waste of her. DeHaan is asked to create a character based on a collection of odd tics, which has regrettably happened far too frequently throughout his career. However, neither Jacob nor Abish’s relationship, nor either of them as individuals, is ever sufficiently established for his search for her to have any bearing. As Kitsch ruminates and muses over the tragedies in Isaac’s past, he is also playing notes that he has previously been given in better projects.
The two main stories are initially intertwined, but they soon disappear from each other. Other than offering various approaches to illustrating Smith’s more general, all too familiar point about what a harsh, disagreeable, and ruthless environment the West could be, it’s unclear why they’re even working on the same project. It turns out that there is tedium here as well.
Netflix is currently streaming all six of American Primeval’s episodes. I’ve witnessed everything.
