Certificate 15, 111mins

Seraphim Falls is a period western that ties your stomach into knots. The scenic backdrops are amazing. David von Ancken’s film begins in the lonely mountains in deep midwinter and finishes in a mud-baked desert in the middle of nowhere.

There is little subtlety about the story, or any mythic heroes in it. Liam Neeson is a shark-eyed hunter who hires a handful of ugly mercenaries to hunt down Pierce Brosnan. He aches for a revenge which is clumsily hidden until the last reel. These two old soldiers come from different sides of the American Civil War, but Neeson’s Confederate officer is still on the scent of Brosnan’s Union soldier three years after the truce has been declared.

The allegory is as creaky as the plot. The edgy pleasure is to be found in the sheer brutality of the chase and the bitter struggle to survive the elements. Brosnan’s withered trooper has a canny talent with a knife. He carves his way through the mercenaries paid to kill him with the occasional melancholy ac-knowledgement of his own lethal brilliance. “You’re a fool boy. I told you to pass on,” he says, while pulling his dagger out of a young cowboy’s neck.

By the time Neeson corners his adversary in the desert the duel has taken on a supernatural pomp and circumstance. Angelica Huston trundles past the two parched gladiators like Mother Courage in a velvet ballgown. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or leave.

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