Matthias Schoenaerts steps out of the shadows, tilts his cowboy hat – then tries to fight a tank of a man for cash. From there, this preposterous western only ramps up the bloody chaos
) makes quite the entrance. He emerges from the shadows, looks up from beneath the brow of his tilted cowboy hat and offers to fight a tank of an Austrian man, bare-knuckled, for a substantial cash prize.
In among the revelry, there is a bloody and ruthless story. The politics of New Babylon and its wider environs are fragile. It is not certain whether Ellis is a tyrant or a visionary, even to his own children. Whether Sarah wants to be there at all is also unclear. Putting her at the centre of the story seems like an attempt to update the western, but to begin with she is the least showy element of the drama.