Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Movie, Book, and Music Review Godless on Netflix

Seven episode miniseries on Netflix, each episode goes about an hour or a bit more. The premise is that all but five or six of the men in the town of La Belle, NM died in a mining accident, leaving nothing but a town full of women and kids. The other half of the premise is that a large gang of hardened gunmen are searching for someone who was in their gang and who their leader believes betrayed him and who is, of course, holed up in or near La Belle. This outlaw gang has already massacred every living soul in another town that the leader thinks helped this person, then they burned down the town, so there is reason for the folks of La Belle to worry.

I'd give parts of this five stars and parts of it one star, so overall it gets three stars. The first half hour or so is pretty confusing since a lot of it is told in flashbacks and it takes a while to orient yourself, but once you get past that the back story parts are done well, showing why people are who they are. Some reviewers go on and on about the "strong women" and if you go into it deliberately looking for some subliminal feminist message I'm sure you'll find it, but overall it's more like a Shane meets High Plains Drifter kind of thing.

Naturally folks here will critique the weapons and they did pretty good for 1886, folks carry Winchester 73's and various kinds of handguns including some cap and ball conversions, no 1894 Winchesters to be found. There are a couple of tiny gun flaws but nothing horrendous - they like to flourish their guns a bit too much and one woman racks the lever of an empty Henry rifle but unless you know how a Henry loads you'd never see it or care. While I didn't keep track of shots fired guns do run out of ammo and people have to reload quickly in the middle of a shootout.

The characters were interesting and I liked most of them. Jeff Daniels plays the bad guy and does a great job, he is a multi-dimensional character showing both mercy and madness, although his concept of "mercy" can be pretty deadly. The lawman in town is losing his eyesight and trying to hide it which makes an interesting wrinkle on an old standard character.

I'd quibble with the story, it was kind of hit or miss at times and some stuff really didn't ring true, but I think you'd see that in most any movie that wasn't made by die-hard Western history buffs. Some things are built up only to be let down in the end. In other things holes in the story are filled in nicely and plot details are wrapped up neatly. Some characters die futile and senseless deaths and while there are several shootouts throughout, the big gunfights (plural) at the end, while righteous, are straight out of Cliche City. I will say those folks, men and women, are some tough people. They take gunshot wounds to the liver, upper lung, gut, kidney, bullet to the arm etc., and just kind of walk it off. Well, they might fall down, but they're up and about in the next scene..

But if you like a fairly well told story about redemption of evil and all that then overall it's decent enough. Not a top ten classic by any means but I enjoyed it.

I have a few comments on Godless. The cast members went to a training site conducted by a Joey Dillinger. He taught the actors how to handle their firearms. Given that Michelle Dockery, Jack O Connell, and the fellow that played the deputy are British subjects, the training probably helped. Heck, I stopped watching Longmire because I got tired of the hero having to pull back the hammer on his 1911. And it always made a sound you could hear a block away.
The sheriff's sister was born in NY and went to socialist summer camps(source, IMDB), so she was likely not familiar with firearms. But I thought the cast handles their firearms pretty well. There was one accident when one of the women dropped a handgun and had an accidental discharge. That was a stupid scene that did nothing for the show, the director should have omitted that.
Still, the story was a good, don't look for historical accuracy. Give it a try.

Entertaining, but could've been great.

We enjoyed the series. Wife didn’t care for the lesbian undertones tho....I didn’t mind it at all. I was sincerely jealous of the young deputy who could twirl his SAA like a pro!

Worth watching.

Agreed.