Viggo Mortensen Joins Western Renaissance With a Clint Eastwood-Worthy Movie

Summary:

• Viggo Mortensen finally presented the trailer for his new western movie
• Aside from starring, he also directed, produced and wrote the film
• The movie is already being praised as a lesson in how to do westerns right in 2024

We could swear it was yesterday when we were watching the Lord of the Rings movies, but here we are: the year is 2024, and Viggo Mortensen has traded his Gondor sword for a good old western shootout.

The Aragorn star is set to return to our screens with a bang: he is not only the main star of the upcoming western The Dead Don't Hurt, but he is also its director, writer, producer, and composer.

The movie is not just a western: first of all, it jumps on the western Renaissance hype train with class, being a master class in the genre; secondly, it's a female-centric story done right.

What Is The Dead Don't Hurt About?

The Dead Don't Hurt revolves around French Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy, portrayed by Vicky Krieps, who falls in love with Viggo Mortensen's Holger Olsen — a Danish immigrant to North America. What could've been just a love story gets real ugly real quick as their little paradise is disrupted by Civil War.

The movie first premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, drawing mostly positive reviews from critics. Now that a trailer was released about a week ago, movie fans are happy to join them, because Viggo Mortensen's brain child looks perfect on every front.

According to fans, the trailer alone is a great example of a good old western, with "actors acting and no CGI."

"Now THAT is a trailer, and how they should be done! Got the backstory, the emotions, the conflict [...] bravo," said YouTube user Schwansonian_Townsonian in the comments.

Well, looks like that was exactly Mortensen's goal — not aiming to reinvent anything but rather film a love letter to the genre.

"I thought that I would just try to make a classic Western and not try to do something that brings attention to the camera work or do something completely different – I just wanted to do it really straightforward, but really well shot and hopefully well written and definitely well acted and see if that works," Viggo told Deadline.

The Dead Don't Hurt hit theaters on May 31.

Source: Deadline