Netflix just had a streaming success with the new Western series Ransom Canyon, just a few months after the big Western success of American Primeval. You can expect another Western to enter into the Netflix Top 10 later this week when Murder at Yellowstone City is added to the streaming service. The film hit festivals and some theaters in 2022 but remains underrated; its Netflix debut will undoubtedly change that. It’s a classical Western with a twist, incorporating an Agatha Christie-type mystery among a great ensemble cast (Thomas Jane, Isaiah Mustafa, Gabriel Byrne, Nat Wolff, Anna Camp, and Richard Dreyfuss).
Mustafa plays Cicero, a former slave who is an erudite student of Shakespeare and just wants to find a place to settle down and live in peace. He arrives at Yellowstone City, a former gold rush boomtown that’s gone bust, and gets acquainted with its collection of quirky outcasts — a saloon keeper who is hiding his union with the man he loves; daughter of the Mexican wars who is ferociously protective of the saloon girls and the town’s orphans; a Lakota Sioux woman caught between the culture she lost and the life she is building.
But on the day Cicero arrives, a penniless prospector strikes a vein of gold that promises to bring the town back to life – and is murdered. The Sheriff (a delicious and malicious Gabriel Byrne), a soldier-turned-lawman who sees justice as a tool for his town to take care of its own, immediately suspects Cicero – “the only man who doesn’t know what I’ll do to him” – and throws him in jail. Cicero remains quietly defiant, patiently looking for any way out. There’s more than just an undertone of racism in the way he’s immediately suspected and jailed. But how can Cicero prove his innocence, and who actually murdered the prospector?
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Thomas Jane Breaks Down His Film and the Western Genre
Things get even more interesting in Murder at Yellowstone City when Cicero finds a supporter in the town’s new pastor, a former outlaw named Thaddeus, played to perfection by Thomas Jane. The Punisher actor spoke with Matt Mahler of MovieWeb back in 2022 to discuss the film, and had some profound things to say about it and the Western genre writ large. Jane explained:
“A classic Western is all about the freedom of the individual [contrasted by] the confines and rules and morals of living in a town with people, the society. So, you know, you’ve got a conflict between your individual freedom and the rules of society, and which of those rules is worthy of upholding? Which rules can you bend or break? There are certain things that you just can’t break; there are things where, if you go down a path of corruption or let corruption stand and then infect the rest of the town, well, you’re not going to have a town after a while.”
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“The Western is about taking a stand, and standing up for what you believe is right,” explained Jane. In Murder at Yellowstone City, the authority figures want to punish Cicero, but Jane’s preacher man character, Thaddeus, knows in his bones that the suspect is innocent. “It’s not just about this guy and what he did wrong and the fact that you’re going to hang him, even though he’s innocent, like, ‘Okay, we’ll let that one slide because we have to keep a sense of order in the town.’ No, no, actually, what we have to do is tell the truth.” Jane goes on:
“It’s about standing up for what you think is right, because it matters. And I think that does speak to issues that we’re dealing with today. You know, most people just want to be left alone, ‘Just leave me alone, let me go to work, collect my paycheck and, you know, we’ll be alright.’ That doesn’t stand any more today. Certain times in history require good people to stand up and speak out for what is right, what they believe in, and what’s right is the truth.
“We’re entering a period of time, or we’re in it, that the truth becomes more important than your desire to be left alone,” Jane added, and that was in 2022. It’s even more important (and rare) today. See Jane in action in Murder at Yellowstone City when it comes to Netflix this Thursday, April 24, 2025.
You can view the original article HERE.
