‘The Sheriff’ Review

Stars: Michael Edwards, Beni Alexander, Henning Baum, Tom Berenger, Patrick Cage, Rodney Damon Collins, Esteban Cueto, Mark Dacascos, Caitlin Hutson, Connie Jackson | Written by Michael Edwards, Josh Tessier | Directed by Josh Tessier

“Let’s take him to the farm.”

From writer-director Josh Tessier comes The Sheriff, a small-town Western that details the personal and professional journey of the Sheriff. Whilst dealing with his own demons and trauma, Sheriff Light finds himself uncovering a grand operation of crime, corruption, and cocaine.

The Sheriff opens with a pick ‘n’ mix of pure violence; murder in a trunk, fighting, and drugs are all present. Leading the violence with his crew of like-minded thugs is Tulip, played by Milo Gibson. This graphic murder of a young man, a son of a Riverwood resident, instantly draws parallels to the murder of the son of the town’s own Sheriff Nick Light (Michael Edwards). Aided by Deputy Shaw (Patrick Cage) and his journalist daughter, Jessica (Sol Rodriguez), Sheriff

Light must battle through PTSD flashbacks and alcoholism in his pursuit of justice, in addition to closure over his son’s death. Often, The Sheriff does fall into having generic small-town character archetypes. In terms of villainy and villainous characters, The Sheriff finds success in this department, often a result of Milo Gibson’s performance. As the hilariously named Tulip, Gibson is a full-on evil bastard; truly sadistic and slimy. With slicked back hair, and a voice similar to that of Mel, Milo delivers a memorable performance.

Beyond Milo and his Tulip, strong character performances are fairly limited. Michael Edwards, as the tormented Sheriff Nick Light, delivered an effectively seasoned performance. A true performance of a veteran; one we would expect from Eastwood and alike. The more recognisable names within the cast – Tom Berenger and Mark Dacascos – are relegated to minor roles, especially that of the latter. Their respective scenes – though minute – do hold significance to the escalation of the story within The Sheriff.

The 80-something minute runtime of The Sheriff actually exists as a detriment, and prohibits a natural or more enjoyable fleshing out of its characters and story. For roughly half of the film, there is enough presented of the key players to have them decently established before dropping them into chaos, violence, or general disarray. From there on, The Sheriff establishes too many connections and twists, but without enough time to truly explore these plots or at least make sense of them, instead, life is easier to just recklessly kill off characters. However, in the background, both the cinematography and location design are excellent and engaging. From a midnight bar to a crack-den train carriage, the environment is always curious and exciting throughout.

Overall, The Sheriff suffers greatly from its execution of the story across its short running time. With so many backstories present, alongside probably too many storylines and plot points, The Sheriff should have been a lengthier Western tale. Instead, despite many exciting moments and elements, plus worthy performances on either side of good and bad, the lasting ambience is that of two to three TV episodes being mashed together in 30-40 minutes of film time.

** 2/5

The Sheriff will be released on April 6th.