Trailer For Michael Shannon's Modern-Day Western Crime Thriller THE QUARRY
Lionsgate has released a trailer for an interesting upcoming thriller titled The Quarry. The film stars Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water, Nocturnal Animals) and Shea Whigham (Joker, Boardwalk Empire). It’s based on a novel of the same name by Damon Galgut.
The story tells a “tale of sin and redemption set in the wilds of Texas. After murdering a traveling preacher, a fugitive drifter (Whigham) travels to a small town and poses as the man he killed. Though the congregation loves the drifter’s sermons of forgiveness, the local police chief (Shannon) is suspicious of the man. Soon a gruesome discovery at a local quarry forces the killer to fight for his freedom.”
The film is a modern-day style western and it looks like a solid film. I like the actors who are in the film, and it looks like something I’d enjoy. The movie was helmed by Scott Teems (That Evening Sun) and he offered the following statement:
The Quarry is based on a novel by Damon Galgut, one that deals with the cycles of human violence, and the ways that history seems doomed to repeat itself, ad nauseam, forever. And though the book was first published in 1995, its themes remain fraught and relevant, today as much as ever.
Galgut’s novel dealt with race relations in post-apartheid South Africa, but the character conflicts bear striking similarity to the immigration crisis we face in America today, and our attitudes toward those who don’t look like us. As such, the story offered an all-too-obvious translation from the barrens of the African coast to the wastelands of rural Texas.
Different continent, same problems. History repeats.
And though these larger themes of race and violence are urgent and universal, and give the book its scope, they are not what initially drew me to the story. When I first read the novel, I was compelled by the deeply personal and starkly profound story of a man caught in a web of lies, haunted by his past, and desperate for redemption. It was a Dostoevskian tale of crime and punishment, poetic and searching. In the story of a man I saw the stories of all humankind; our desire for connection and our desperate need for forgiveness. In the end, that is the true power of The Quarry. The delicate dance of the intimate and the epic.
I hope our film does justice to these grand ideas. And I hope the audience is compelled to engage with the story, to wrestle with its ramifications, and to talk about it long after they’ve left the theater. For in the end, our version of The Quarry is a Texas fable, haunted and hopeful, and its aspirations are as big as the state in which it’s set.
The movie also stars Catalina Sandino Moreno (The Affair), Bobby Soto (Narcos: Mexico) and Bruno Bichir (Sicario: Day of the Soldado). It will be released on April 17, 2020.