The Most Underrated Western Movie of 2023 Just Landed on Prime

Summary

• Last year a great Western movie was released, directed by Anthony Mandler.
• It's a story about a black woman who went through the Civil War disguised as a man and now wants to buy land for black people.
• It recently became available on Prime.

The 2020s are sure to mark a resurgence in the Western genre, with more and more high-profile films and series in the genre being released that can easily rival the projects of the past decades.

The year 2023 alone has seen the release of such Westerns as 1923 and Lawmen: Bass Reeves developed by Taylor Sheridan, the satirical Strange Way of Life with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, Martin Scorsese 's Killers of the Flower Moon, Australia's Faraway Downs with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, and even a South Korean take on the genre in Song of the Bandits. All in all, the genre hasn't stood still and is still going strong on both the big and small screen.

Last year also saw the release of a notable Western drama that was perfectly timed for Black History Month due to its subject matter, but unfortunately not as many people were able to get to know the movie in question. It only reached streaming services this year with its addition to Prime.

Well, we'll have to wait for the final season of Yellowstone episodes in the coming months anyway, so instead of the tedious wait, check out this stylish Western that deftly plays on classic tropes but is bold enough to touch on issues of racial and gender inequality.

What Is This Movie About?

We're talking about Surrounded, which was released digitally last year by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (now owned by Amazon), but only recently became available for streaming on Prime. The movie was directed by Anthony Mandler, a filmmaker best known for producing music videos for famous pop artists from Rihanna to Taylor Swift — a rather unexpected revelation, but hey, at least he has taste!

As for the movie itself, it's a spectacular story in the spirit of the classic Westerns of the last century directed by Clint Eastwood, Howard Hawks, John Ford and Peter Fonda. The film is gritty in its dilemmas, epic in its characters' quirks and dares, full of spectacular action sequences, and yet unafraid to touch on issues of racism in the early years after the Civil War.

The 1870s, somewhere in New Mexico. A young black man named Mo Washington, a former Buffalo Soldier, travels by stagecoach to Colorado to take possession of a property there. But things are not that simple and the stagecoach is attacked by a group of bandits. Fortunately, the survivors manage to tie up their leader, the notorious Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell), whom Moe watches closely with his 1858 Remington revolver.

However, Walsh turned out to be the only one who guessed Moe's gender correctly. After all, it is none other than Letitia Wright, who plays a gun-toting black woman who wants her people to find a place where they can live a quiet and free life.

What Do Critics and Audiences Say about Him?

Unfortunately, not many people have seen it yet, as it only recently became available for streaming. Nevertheless, the reviews of Surrounded on review aggregators are quite strong. On Rotten Tomatoes, the critics score is an impressive 89% and the audience score is 83%.

Most noted that the narrative develops rather slowly, and that behind the action scenes and character portrayals, there is no underlying story that could have been sufficiently developed over the entire 102 minutes of the film. Still, Surrounded manages to deliver an incredibly compelling story based on powerful dialogue and the historical realities that befell blacks in the post-Civil War era.