R | 1h 54min | Drama, Mystery | 27 May 2022 (USA)
Had creator and show runner Taylor Sheridan chosen another name for his wildly popular Paramount+ TV series “Yellowstone,” it could have just as easily been “Montana Story.” Like this film with that name, it includes a patriarch with a lot of baggage (emotional and otherwise), siblings with emotional scars, and years’ old unfinished business to tend to amid the backdrop of some of the most gorgeous natural scenery God ever created.
Not long after the opening credits, a vehicle passes underneath an entrance archway with the family name in cast iron: “Thorne”: one not dissimilar to the wooden “Dutton” sign shown regularly in “Yellowstone,” but this is where any comparisons to the two productions ceases. The viewer is not entering a sprawling estate chock full of intrigue and obscene riches, but one of desperation and resigned, nagging closure; a once-imagined great life desiccated by poor decisions and would-be grandeur….