Tim Blake Nelson has a blast as a pig farmer with something to hide, but this low-aiming western is as familiar as refried beans
Old Henry premieres at the Sala Grande here at Venice, with the sea at its front and the gondolas at its back and it’s hard to imagine a less appropriate setting. Potsy Ponciroli’s film is a rootin’ tootin’ barrel of wild-west cliches, complete with bank robbers, a scared kid and a dastardly villain who wears a black hat. The programmers could at least have played ball and put some saloon doors at the entrance, sawdust on the floor, maybe a spittoon by each seat.
Tim Blake Nelson grabs a rare and deserved title role as Henry, an ornery old pig farmer who may (slight spoiler) be a stone-cold cowboy killer in flight from a past he’d rather not talk about, dagnammit. Even so, Henry’s currently doing fine. He has a meek teenage son, Wyatt (Gavin Lewis) and a mess of hogs out the back. “Don’t it ever bother you sometimes that they eat their own?” asks Wyatt, but this doesn’t worry Henry, who surely saw far worse things occur during the bad old life that he may or may not have lived in the past.