Film Review: THE DEAD DON’T HURT (2023): Natural Beauty and Janky Accents Consume Viggo Mortensen’s Sleepy Western

The Dead Don’t Hurt Review

The Dead Don’t Hurt (2023) Film Review, a movie directed by Viggo Mortensen, written by Viggo Mortensen, and starring Vicky Krieps, Viggo Mortensen, Solly McLeod, Garret Dillahunt, W. Earl Brown, Danny Huston, Shane Graham, and Rafel Plana.

To be completely honest, I have never been particularly drawn to the western genre. Sure, I like Tombstone and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as much as the next adult male, but there is something engrained in this classic genre of cinema that feels like a ball and chain to me. A paint-by-numbers formula that affects everything from the characters to the costumes—of course there are outliers that transcend the baggage of the genre, but they are few and far between.

Viggo Mortensen has made a commendable step into the world of jangling spurs and unchecked masculinity by centering his film around a strong female protagonist in Vicky Krieps with The Dead Don’t Hurt, but it’s formless body and alarming lack of “dead” all add up to a snoozy western film that left me wanting more of anything.

Written, directed, produced, and starring Viggo Mortensen, The Dead Don’t Hurt begins like you may expect a story taking place during the American Civil War, with a body being buried. It’s Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen), a Danish immigrant pursuing the American dream out west. The film subverts our expectations of Holger helming the lead role of the film by giving that honor to Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps), who appears shortly after with her waspy and commanding lover, but he’s no match for the jumbled speech of Holger Olsen!

And this leads me to the first problem of the film. I couldn’t understand a word between our leads. While I was trying to decipher what Vivienne Le Coudy said, Holger Olsen would begin to speak and force me to abandon my quest in order to keep up with the conversation. This hamster wheel of a dilemma had me ping-ponging back and forth between words and dialogue that never allowed me to settle down with them. To Mortensen’s directing and the actors’ credit, you can gather a lot of the story from the emotion and body language of the characters, but it would have been nice to hear what they were saying more than half the time.

Their love story continues in secluded Northern Nevada, until Holger decides to enlist in the Union Army and leave Vivienne at home to continue working as a barmaid at the local watering hole. It becomes clear that this is her film, and we, the audience, are made to feel what she feels, not the traditional male lead. Things happen and years go by, mostly in silent moments painted in breathtaking landscapes that Mortensen captures wonderfully in frame. But the story tends to meander too much. It’s gelatinous structure lulled me into sheer boredom at several points. A strong female lead can only go so far when the story swims aimlessly through time. Pacing and scripting feel like the issue here, not the performances.

The strength of the movie lies in the world. Beauty is stitched together elegantly between the period clothing and rugged landscapes. This is also the strength of the genre. The American West is a canvas like none other. It allows the actors to slip seamlessly into their roles and affords the audience a drool-inducing composition to sink our teeth into. And The Dead Don’t Hurt does not skimp out in this department.

At the end of the day, the picture left me feeling indifferent. A troubling quality for any artform to have. I could see what Mortensen wanted to do, but the film never achieved it. The ending shots are to die for. A shimmering California sun glints atop the Pacific Ocean, but just like so many other hopeful souls who followed that long road out west only to find the end of the world, the promise was more than what was delivered.

Rating: 5/10

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