Spoilers Ahead:::
Godless was easy on the eyes, beautiful countryside, which for some reason kept toggling between color and black and white. A lot of the artifacts like the wagons looked authentic. I kept thinking that something important was just about to happen, but it never did until the totally predictable final gunfight between the outlaws and the townsfolk.
I wont repeat whats in the other reviews, here's what I'd like to add. I liked the characters but was put off by the 2017 morality. Everyone was a lesbian or bi racial or a whore who saved her money and became a wealthy school teacher. Just your average western town. For all the background on the characters, I was left with some really big questions like why were those men following Jeff Daniels all those years? They didn't seem to have possession or wives or girlfriends or houses. They just rode around year after year hurting people. Why? They didn't even have back up horses or a wagon full of food. Alice had a ranch or farm but, like all the others, she didn't grown any crops. She had no employees, she just spent her time digging wells and fixing fences. Why? When the finale started, all the hard tough villains rode into a trap. And stayed there. No one sought cover. A couple charged the townspeople but most just stood around waiting to get shot while the inexperienced women were smart enough to hide behind fortifications. In the finale Jeff Daniels kinda sat on his horse looking around amid seemingly thousands of rounds fired at his brigade. Wouldn't most of the bullets been aimed at him? During the movie Jeff Daniels starts as a crazy sadist roaring his anger at Roy Goode. Then he has scenes where he's crazily kind ie: he and his men surround the lone sheriff who swears to kill them but they let him walk away? For a man that destroyed a whole town this seems out of character. Speaking of the sheriff, much was made of his going blind. Then someone sells him 'spectacles' and he's amazed that he can see again. WTF! He never heard of glasses (even in 1865)? Yet they are so common that a man he casually bumps into happens to have a pair for sale in his pocket. I found that some of the characters tried too hard to have an accent and wound up sounding like a member of an 8th grade Christmas play. People kept ignoring their gunshot wounds. I imagine that if I had a gun shot wound in my stomach I'd be rolling on the ground screaming for the 1865 equivalent of morphine, but none of these characters ever did. Michelle Dockery was beautiful and enigmatic but in the end her character was hollow.
Godless was easy on the eyes, beautiful countryside, which for some reason kept toggling between color and black and white. A lot of the artifacts like the wagons looked authentic. I kept thinking that something important was just about to happen, but it never did until the totally predictable final gunfight between the outlaws and the townsfolk.
I wont repeat whats in the other reviews, here's what I'd like to add. I liked the characters but was put off by the 2017 morality. Everyone was a lesbian or bi racial or a whore who saved her money and became a wealthy school teacher. Just your average western town. For all the background on the characters, I was left with some really big questions like why were those men following Jeff Daniels all those years? They didn't seem to have possession or wives or girlfriends or houses. They just rode around year after year hurting people. Why? They didn't even have back up horses or a wagon full of food. Alice had a ranch or farm but, like all the others, she didn't grown any crops. She had no employees, she just spent her time digging wells and fixing fences. Why? When the finale started, all the hard tough villains rode into a trap. And stayed there. No one sought cover. A couple charged the townspeople but most just stood around waiting to get shot while the inexperienced women were smart enough to hide behind fortifications. In the finale Jeff Daniels kinda sat on his horse looking around amid seemingly thousands of rounds fired at his brigade. Wouldn't most of the bullets been aimed at him? During the movie Jeff Daniels starts as a crazy sadist roaring his anger at Roy Goode. Then he has scenes where he's crazily kind ie: he and his men surround the lone sheriff who swears to kill them but they let him walk away? For a man that destroyed a whole town this seems out of character. Speaking of the sheriff, much was made of his going blind. Then someone sells him 'spectacles' and he's amazed that he can see again. WTF! He never heard of glasses (even in 1865)? Yet they are so common that a man he casually bumps into happens to have a pair for sale in his pocket. I found that some of the characters tried too hard to have an accent and wound up sounding like a member of an 8th grade Christmas play. People kept ignoring their gunshot wounds. I imagine that if I had a gun shot wound in my stomach I'd be rolling on the ground screaming for the 1865 equivalent of morphine, but none of these characters ever did. Michelle Dockery was beautiful and enigmatic but in the end her character was hollow.