★★☆☆☆Idris Elba on autopilot, an underused supporting cast and some terrible chunks of sub-Tarantino dialogue are among the many lowlights of this mishmash western from the singer-songwriter Jeymes Samuel, aka the Bullitts (his short film They Die by Dawn, also a western, is vastly superior).
Elba stars as real-life 19th-century American outlaw Rufus Buck, who, in this deliberately anarchic version of pop history, is the mortal enemy of cowboy hero Nat Love (Jonathan Majors from Lovecraft Country).
Buck, we learn, during an initial and outré scene-setting flashback, massacred Love’s family and cut a cross into the young boy’s forehead.
The movie that follows is, thus, an avenger’s drama in the grand western tradition (“You killed my pa!”), but one that’s structurally patchy,
