The Harder They Fall: Terrific Original Western! (Netflix)

This film has a Rotten Tomatoes 86% critics and 93% audience score.  I really enjoyed it and it's one of my favorite films of the year.  If you like westerns, it's probably a MUST-SEE!  I anticipate that it will wind up on my Top-Ten list for 2021.  It's an all-Black western with terrific acting, an interesting plot, beautiful cinematography, off-beat humor, and originality.  It's an AAW movie! Jeymes Samuel, who directed, co-wrote the screenplay, and scored the movie, is a very talented man who I predict will continue to do great things.  Samuel has obviously been considerably influenced by Quentin Tarantino.  The film has much in common with "Django Unchained", but charts its own course.  Be forewarned, however: like Tarantino films, this one has plenty of violence (extremely well-choreographed), but it isn't gratuitous.  Some of these characters actually existed in the old west, but the events are completely fictional. The film starts out with a flash-back, when Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) is a young boy at the dinner table with his mother and father.  A psychologically traumatic event occurs.  The film then shifts to the present where Nat has become an outlaw, obsessed with revenge on an even more infamous outlaw, Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), who is about as evil as you can get. The film has an unusual love-story, with an on/off relationship between Nat and Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beets).  Its themes of early psychological trauma resulting in profound family dysfunction, as well as the futility of violence, are well conveyed, but not in any heavy-handed way.  The movie is best seen on the BS, although I saw it on my TV.  It's got everything a great western needs, including rival gangs, train and bank robberies, fist fights, large-scale gunfights, etc. Bottom Line: It's a fun "ride," and I really "fell" for it!