Westerns are ideal for stories hinged on remote isolation; sieges, shootouts, hostage situations all gain an added zing when the good guys and bad guys are a hundred miles from the nearest one-horse town, with no prospect of raising the alarm. That’s certainly the case for Pandora (Heather Graham) and Hester (Brielle Robillard), a widow and her teenage daughter living a long way from civilisation, at a time when civilisation was far from a guarantee of safety.
At the start, as Hester hangs out by her dad’s grave you might imagine you’re in for a sombre relationship-based film, perhaps calling to mind the likes of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff. Perhaps this will be a quiet meditation on grief and womanhood in the old west? Not a bit of it. Moments later, she discovers a wounded bandit, and being a good Christian girl, she brings him to their home for her mother to tend to. Naturally, he and his satchel full of ill-gotten cash bring a whole heap of trouble down on their heads, in which a posse of no-good wrong ’uns are closing in, with numbers and firepower on their side and dollar signs in their eyes.
It’s pretty evident that this is a fairly low-budget film, with that faint sense of hired costumes about the western gear. But it’s entertaining enough and keeps you guessing. There’s even a fairly out-there sting in the tail, which unfortunately comes a little late to register as a full twist and so plays as more of a “huh” moment, but it’s a neat idea.
• Place of Bones is on digital platforms from 16 September.
