Netflix has just released the new trailer for the upcoming Western thrillerThe Power of the DogfeaturingDoctor StrangestarBenedict Cumberbatch. They truly teased us this summer with the teaser trailer for the film, but after viewing just two minutes and change, I think we’re all going to be glad of our Netflix subscriptions. Giddy up!
The Netflix official synopsis forThe Power of the Dogreads, “Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter.
Phil, asplayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter - all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form - he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?”
The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee and was written and directed byAcademy Award-winning filmmaker Jane Campion. Benedict Cumberbatch has proven to be a chameleon, weaving in and out of roles throughout his career, but I can’t say we’ve ever seen him take on a role with such malice, not to mention the flawless accent. Real-life married couple, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons met on the set of the Hulu seriesFargoin the show’s second season. They play a married couple whose dreams of a better life do not align. If you have been sleeping on Noah Hawley’s masterful writing delivered by acting powerhouses, you are doing yourself a cinematic injury. Stop whatever you are doing, WHATEVER you are doing, and get thee to your Hulu.
Jane Campion took the world and the Academy by storm with the 1993 classicThe Piano. It garnered her an Oscar for Best Writing, as well as Best Actress for Holly Hunter and Best Supporting Role for Anna Paquin. Campion’s directing ofTop of the Lakestarring Elisabeth Moss, would see her walking away with an Emmy for directing. Since you’ve already stopped whatever you were doing to watchFargoon Hulu, you may take a snack break and jump intoTop of the Lakeafter, The night is young!
The Power of the Doghas been heralded as mesmerizing, astonishing, and a masterpiece. Catch it in select theaters in November and onNetflixon December 1.
