Illustration by Michael DiMilo
The Middle of Nowhere: Film Review of Surrounded
By Geoff Carter
The film Surrounded is set in the stunning landscape of New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch, the setting of other notable westerns like The Missing, 3:10 to Yuma, and Wyatt Earp. While Surrounded contains many of the formulaic elements of that genre, including a sociopathic outlaw, the snotty schoolmarmish matron, bloodthirsty Comanches, and an alienated hero—in this case, a heroine, it does not come close to measuring up to those other paragons of the genre. The beautiful buttes and canyons of the location are not enough to prop up a weak script, one-dimensional acting, vapid conceits, and a puzzling storyline.
A few years after the end of the Civil War, freedwoman and former buffalo soldier Moses “Mo” Washington (Letitia Wright), while disguised as a man, is traveling to Colorado to claim a gold mine. The opening sequence is a nightmarish collage of Mo wandering through a darkened landscape of shackled African Americans being beaten, harassed, and abused under an arch of cattle skulls. It is unclear whether this is sequence is reality, a memory, or some sort of fever dream. Whatever its purpose, it is a compelling and harrowing sequence. During this sequence and at all times after, Mo closely guards a Bible which holds the deed to her gold claim in Colorado.
Despite the racist attitudes of the driver and other passengers, Mo buys a ticket on the stagecoach but is relegated to ride in the back. The other passengers Mrs. Borders (Augusta Allen-Jones) and Mr. Fields (Brett Gelman) are nothing more than well-worn stereotypical archetypes of the genre. Mrs. Borders is the needy and arrogant matronly townie while Fields (just channel Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach) is the drunken and foolish wag.
The stage is held up by notorious outlaw Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell) and his gang. During the robbery, Fields is shot and wounded and during an action-packed and suspenseful chase, the stage is destroyed, going over a cliff with Mo’s Bible inside. During a running—and visually disjointed—gunfight, most of the gang is killed and Tommy is captured. Determined to get Mr. Fields to a doctor, the other passengers leave Mo to guard Walsh until they return.
Walsh is a loquacious and somewhat charming outlaw—a sort of sympathetic sociopath. He starts in early on Mo, wheedling and pushing and sympathizing and coercing. At first, she will have nothing to do with him, even after he tells her he can tell she is a woman. Walsh’s patter soon gets to Mo, and she soon finds herself in a caustic dialogue with the outlaw. Almost unintentionally, they tell each other of their pasts and their struggles. After being freed and her family was killed, Mo joined the Army—as a man—and became a buffalo soldier. Walsh promises Mo anything if he will let her go, including splitting the loot from the gang’s latest heist.
While understanding they share common ground, Mo still refuses to trust Walsh. When she takes him into the canyon to find the wrecked stagecoach—and her deed—he takes off and is subsequently captured by Comanches. After Mo convinces the Comanches to release Walsh, she finds her deed to the gold mine which has been destroyed in the accident. After they return to their original campsite, the two are confronted by Will Clay (Michael K. Williams), a professed local farmer who turns out to be someone quite different. The film eventually reaches its all-too-predictable conclusion. Right triumphs, evil is vanquished (quite bloodily), and Western justice has been achieved.
The premise of Surrounded is promising—an African American freedwoman ventures into the Western wilderness to gain her fortune and happiness—her due, but runs into her nemesis, a manipulative outlaw. Unfortunately, the writing and directing and ultimately, with a few exceptions, the acting doesn’t live up to the potential of this project.
The conceit that Mo has disguised herself as a man is not credible, especially when some characters see through the deceit while others do not. While Letitia Wright delivers a performance as taut as an overtuned guitar string, her character does not stray beyond that defining quality of tension. She is justifiably, angry, frustrated, and afraid, but nothing deeper is revealed about the character. Tommy Walsh, on the other hand, is a character whose qualities run deeper than his coercive manipulations. He tells Mo he was a Union soldier and had a Native American wife and child and hints at the fact that something happened to the two of them. Tommy has some depth, but ultimately falls short of being sympathetic—or even believable.
Probably the best performance of the film is delivered by the late Michael Kenneth Williams as Will Clay, the mysterious stranger who seemingly stumbles onto Mo’s camp. Although he’s only on the screen for a short time, his presence, like the entrance of a maestro, commands the screen completely. Wright and Gelman simply cannot match his charisma. Their portrayals pale in comparison to William’s performance; they seem diminished and even shrill.
This movie could have been so much more. An African American woman, a veteran who served as a buffalo soldier, is trying to establish a home and identity despite ubiquitous racism and discrimination opens a Pandora’s box of conflict, pain, and struggle, but, unfortunately, the screenplay descends into clichéd characters, formulaic plot devices, and potboiler morality. It is a disappointment. Instead of exploring the nature of racial and gender identity, the effects of social isolation, or the illusory underpinnings of the American Dream, it instead lapses into a banal and confusing trek into the .
Besides Mr. Williams, the film’s most redeeming quality is the beautiful location. Set primarily at New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch, the beautiful landscape not only emphasizes the tenets and underlying cultural foundations of the Western genre, but also highlights the isolation and alienation from society Mo has experienced as an African American woman in the old West.
It is also a shame that Wright was not given the opportunity to stretch her character beyond the intensely self-contained Mo. a woman who, despite her fighting skills, brains, and gumption, seems cocooned by her own apprehension. Her conversations with Walsh at times seem shrill and at times whiny while her anger and frustrations don’t lead to retaliation but rather desperation.
Surrounded could have been a much better film, but it fell victim to formulaic cliches and flat characterizations. The movie has an odd sort of hollowness to it. The characters are not believable, and the workings of the plot are, like the man behind the curtain, are all too visibly deliberate. This cinematic experience is underwhelming. It is indeed in the middle of nowhere.
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