Nicolak Coster-Waldau in BLACKTHORN, a Magnet Release directed by Gil Mateo. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Also Starring:
Director:
Screenwriter:
Producer:
Executive Producer:
- Paolo Agazzi
- Ignasi Estape
- Angel Durandez
- Jerome Vidal
Production Designer:
Editor:
Costume Designer:
Music:
Casting:
Special Effects:
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* Most external filmography links go to The Internet Movie Database.
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Blackthorn (2011)
Opened: 10/07/2011 Limited
| Fallbrook 7 | 07/22/2011 - 07/28/2011 | 7 days |
| Theaters | 10/07/2011 | |
| Sunshine Cinema | 10/07/2011 - 10/20/2011 | 14 days |
| Laemmle's Play... | 10/07/2011 - 10/20/2011 | 14 days |
| Laemmle's Town... | 10/07/2011 - 10/13/2011 | 7 days |
| Lincoln Plaza | 10/07/2011 - 10/13/2011 | 7 days |
| The Landmark | 10/07/2011 - 10/13/2011 | 7 days |
| Kendall Square... | 10/14/2011 - 10/27/2011 | 14 days |
| DVD | 12/20/2011 |
Trailer: Click for trailer
Genre: Western
Rated: Unrated
Synopsis
It's been said (but unsubstantiated) that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in a standoff with the Bolivian military in 1908. In BLACKTHORN, Cassidy (Shepard) survived, and is quietly living out his years under the name James Blackthorn in a secluded Bolivian village. Tired of his long exile from the US and hoping to see his family again before he dies, Cassidy sets out on the long journey home. But when an unexpected encounter with an ambitious young criminal (Eduardo Noriega) derails his plans, he is thrust into one last adventure, the likes of which he hasn't experienced since his glory days with the Sundance Kid.
Director's Statement
One of the things that I like most about Westerns is that it's a truly moral genre. The characters face life and death, and other very important matters (freedom, commitment and loyalty, courage, treachery, ownership and money, justice, friendship and even love) in very pure and simple terms. The decisions they make are not only very dramatic, but set examples. What more can you ask from a film? From any dramatic work? It's a genre that helps us look at our own life and find a way to face it.
BLACKTHORN encloses all these subjects in such a way that we realize how contemporary they are, how important moral outlook is in the world we live in nowadays, in the society we have built, that seems to have forgotten it or considers it obsolete... By facing these matters from a modern point of view (conscious of the fact that the legendary American outlaw will end up as just another extra in Hollywood Westerns) the outlook is obviously nostalgic.
In my opinion, that ever present melancholy is the most attractive part of this project and forces us to get intimately acquainted with our main hero: That tired and lonely old man who, for an instant, recovers all his energy and dreams due to someone who seems to reincarnate the past, his old friends and ideals, but turns out to be an imposter (the young mine engineer who, what irony, proceeds from the Old Continent).
A disguise that is an obvious metaphor of a future where moral is dangerously hazy as personal interests take top priority.
Therefore, for me BLACKTHORN would not be a film made up by grandiose images and "traditional aesthetic," of slow camera movements and tall crane shots; but of closer images, near to the characters, that allow us to see the landscape through their eyes as they reveal the most intimate side of their dramatic voyage: The deep seated feelings our main character feels for the land that has sheltered him; his feelings about the past and how they are reawakened by the appearance of his new comrade; his feelings towards the woman with whom he spends his afternoons, although the passion of love is absent, affection, respect and carnality are all present; his feelings toward a young man he has never met but who could very well be his son, to whom he writes and directs every last effort; how he feels about the small things that surround him, his clean but simple home, his horses, what he chooses to take with him on this last trek, where he chooses to sleep each night as they advance...
Let's get as close as possible to the characters and their story, by doing so, we will be capable of making a truly universal film.
-- Mateo Gil
About the Director
MATEO GIL is well known in Spain as a screenwriter. He co-wrote Alejandro Amenabar's Thesis, Open Your Eyes (later remade as Vanilla Sky), The Sea Inside, and Agora, as well as The Method for Marcelo Pineyro. His first movie as a director was Nobody Knows Anybody in 1999. He also directed the award-winning shorts Housebreaking and Say Me.
Trailer
