Film review of The Dead Don’t Hurt (2024)

Written, directed and scored by Mortensen (in his second project behind the camera after the contemporary family drama Falling), The Dead Don’t Hurt is set before and during the American Civil War and contains scenes and is reminiscent of films and television shows that would be described as period dramas with a Western flavor rather than pure Westerns. There’s a sadistic psychopath who dresses in black, some rich men exerting their power over a Southwestern town, a kindhearted and soft-spoken sheriff, his steely wife, their beautiful, innocent son and other variations of types commonly found in films set during this period of American history. There is savage violence of various kinds, and it is portrayed realistically and unsparingly, with the exception of one very gruesome act that takes place mostly off-screen.

But there are no stagecoach or train robberies, no high-speed trains at noon, no extended gunfights, no dynamite explosions, etc. The pace is what you would call slow if you don’t like the movie, and deliberate if you do. And underlying it all is a mystery about how things happen, why they happen, who they happen to, and whether anything any individual character did could have prevented any of it.

Mortensen plays Holger Olsen, a Danish immigrant who eventually becomes sheriff of a small town in the American West. He lives in a tiny cabin in a canyon. I won’t tell you exactly where the film begins or ends, as it’s not linear and describing things in the order of a linear timeline would give the wrong impression of the film and give away some pretty important things. Suffice it to say that he goes to San Francisco and meets Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), a French-Canadian flower seller, and takes her to his cabin, where she overcomes her disappointment with his meager lifestyle and tries to build a life for her and the son they will eventually raise together.

At the same time, the film returns to the aforementioned town, which is controlled by an arrogant businessman named Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt), his violent, spoiled son Weston (Solly McLeod), and the mayor Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston), who controls most of the local real estate market as well as the bank. There is tension over the ownership of a saloon run by an eloquent bartender and manager named Alan Kendall (W. Earl Brown). A shootout shown early in the film puts the saloon in the hands of the Jeffries family. Vivienne ends up working there. Weston takes a liking to her and does not react well to being told he can’t have her.