Butcher’s Crossing features a solid Nic Cage performance and an okay sense of craft but loses sight of its characters and greater ideas.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 8, 2025

Butcher’s Crossing is nothing less than a landlocked Moby Dick, a tale of obsession and madness on a sea of grass.

| Original Score: B | Apr 4, 2024

When you have Hollywood’s loosest nut at your disposal and you don’t get the most from him, well, that’s a paddlin’.

| Apr 1, 2024

It manages to hypnotise, thanks to its characters, certain visual aspects, and the performance of one Nicolas Cage, one of my favourite actors (and whose presence is invaluable in this kind of medium-sized indie film). Full review in Spanish.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 24, 2024

Butcher’s Crossing is a distillation of the myth of the American Dream, a critique that still holds true today.

| Jan 2, 2024

The even pacing might register as blandness for viewers expecting a more classic western, but those willing to embark on this journey on its own terms will be rewarded by tremendous character work and a sneakily effective thematic structure.

| Dec 9, 2023

Gabe Polsky’s adaptation of John Williams’ novel is driven by a fierce performance by Nicolas Cage as an Ahab-like hunter who’s intent on wiping out a herd of buffalo in a remote Colorado valley.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 18, 2023

[Fred] Hechinger impresses as the fish out of water, but it's Cage's enigmatic steeliness that carries the film whenever the plot meanders in its attempt to deconstruct the mythology and morality of the Old West.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 8, 2023

Butcher’s Crossing is a decent western, with decent performances. It’s a film that delivers what’s expected. But it could have been so much more.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 6, 2023

…has a dark style and heart-breaking sense of hard-scrabble endurance that only a real adventure can provide, and that’s largely due to Cage’s magnetic presence….

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2023

Butcher’s Crossing is a simple but solid Western with beautiful locations. Cage turns in another intriguing performance to go along with his recent output, even though Miller never quite pops as much as he should.

| Original Score: 7 | Nov 2, 2023

The film doesn’t really know what it is or who it’s for.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 1, 2023

Butcher’s Crossing never fully completes the psychological factor it desperately needs to connect and meet the film’s weighty themes.

| Original Score: C- | Oct 30, 2023

The man vs. nature and man vs. man themes come through in this respectable effort, but “Butcher’s Crossing” is a grim viewing experience.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 27, 2023

This grim, pessimistic Western at times feels a little inert and uneven; it might have had more thrust, more madness, but it still captivates with its powerful visuals and fine performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2023

Not at all action-packed, this is a compelling enough psychological journey that could have excelled further were it to really focus on what impact these men were having on land they did not cherish enough.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 25, 2023

Polsky has great admiration for his source material and his cast, and fails them both through his attempt to give them too much dignity.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 25, 2023

Fear, anxiety, and dread drive Gabe Polsky’s bleak drama which resembles the dark revisionist Westerns from the 70s and 80s, from the Eastwood films to the horror-tinged “The White Buffalo.” Solid cast with Cage delivering a low-key performance.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 24, 2023

For the completists of Nicolas Cage -a captivating presence, as always- and those enamored with the natural world -vividly captured through beautiful photography- that can deal with the buffalo hunting sequences. [Full review in Spanish]

| Oct 24, 2023

The film’s hints of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby-Dick and The Old Man and the Sea lend some much-needed weight to what would otherwise be a pedestrian story of men fighting the elements and one another.

| Oct 23, 2023