Reel Reviews | The Unholy Trinity

by Tim Gordon

In a landscape where the modern Western often struggles to break free from its tropes, The Unholy Trinity saddles up with an impressive cast, a striking frontier setting, and a promise of moral ambiguity. Directed by Richard Gray and written by Lee Zachariah, the film pits generational guilt, buried secrets, and the timeless allure of gold against the harsh realities of life on the American frontier.

The story drops us into Trinity, Montana, a place that feels like it’s rotting from the inside out. Young Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) rides in with his father’s ashes in tow, seeking a legacy that’s already been tainted by violence and betrayal. The town is a tinderbox: tensions smolder as a murder trial nears its verdict, and the gallows loom large over everything, a reminder that frontier justice is swift and rarely just.

Henry’s impulsive attempt to gun down Sheriff Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan) early on is less about vengeance than desperation. Brosnan’s Dove is one of the film’s stronger elements, a weary lawman whose badge weighs as heavily as his secrets. It’s a role that plays to Brosnan’s strengths: that dignified, grizzled charisma that allows him to embody men whose sense of right and wrong is always just a hair’s breadth from slipping.

Counterbalancing him is Samuel L. Jackson’s St. Christopher, a drifter whose presence feels biblical yet sinister, a man who knows too much and says too little until it’s time to strike. Jackson brings a measured menace to St. Christopher, echoing shades of his turn in The Hateful Eight but with less Tarantino excess. He makes the most of a character who is, by design, an enigma, a snake in the tall grass of Trinity, more symbol than man.

Brandon Lessard, in the thankless role of Henry, does what he can to make the lost-son arc compelling, but the script gives him little room to break free from being merely a narrative device, the wide-eyed catalyst who stumbles through others’ secrets. Fortunately, Q’orianka Kilcher’s Running Cub injects a flash of spirit and purpose. Her presence feels like an echo of the countless Indigenous figures sidelined in Westerns’ past, and while her arc could have gone deeper, Kilcher gives the outlaw a flicker of defiance that lingers.

Visually, The Unholy Trinity does justice to its title. The cinematography is drenched in somber tones and bitter windswept plains, the town of Trinity feels like a character in itself, a dead-end frontier clinging to life through rumor and greed. Richard Gray’s direction favors slow-burn tension over bombast, but that restraint is a double-edged sword. While the film feels atmospheric, its pace sometimes meanders, its narrative momentum bogged down by familiar genre beats: double-crosses, whispered confessions, a treasure map to nowhere.

Where the film does find its footing is in its exploration of moral rot, how the promise of gold poisons men who already have too much blood on their hands. The screenplay hints at big ideas about legacy, redemption, and the cost of holding onto a dying way of life, but it never fully commits. By the final act, we’re left with a series of revelations that land with more resignation than impact.

Still, there’s something almost comforting about seeing Brosnan and Jackson spar across dusty streets and candlelit saloons. They know exactly what kind of story they’re in, a Western that leans on archetypes and hard stares, and they elevate it with pure presence. Their exchanges, whether laced with veiled threats or uneasy camaraderie, keep the film watchable even when the plot rides in circles.

In the end, The Unholy Trinity doesn’t reinvent the genre, nor does it try to. It’s a serviceable, sometimes brooding tale of men undone by greed and grudges, held together by the star power of two actors who know how to make even the dustiest tropes feel alive. For fans of the Western, it’s worth a look, just don’t expect to find any new gold buried in these hills.

Grade: C+