Jon Cassar
In the days of the revisionist Western, sometimes a throwback to the simple pleasures of the genre’s oldest delights are all that are needed. The only problem with revisiting old cliches is that no amount of nostalgia or charm can make them feel original again, and if performed without either, it comes across as laboured box-ticking in order to fulfil genre requirements. Forsaken unfortunately is the latter, possessing an initial kitsch charm that wears thin quickly when it transpires the film has no unique tricks up its sleeve.
It’s a reunion on all fronts in the Forsaken trailer. Characters find each other after a long war, actors reunite with former co-stars, and, of course, Kiefer and Donald Sutherland play father and son for the first time onscreen. Anyone who’s entertained by meta-filmmaking should relish watching the two work through their characters’ broken relationship, but there’s plenty of other less obvious things to suss out from this trailer.