Meek's Cutoff
Kelly Reichardt
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Plot Summary
In 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, a wagon train of three families hires mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert. Over the coming days, lost in the heat, the settlers face hunger, thirst and a lack of faith in each person's instincts for survival.
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Director
Movie Reviews from Rotten Tomatoes
TOMATOMETER
85%- Reviews Counted: 116
- Fresh: 99
- Rotten: 17
- Average Rating: 7.5/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: Reichardt has stripped "Meek's" down to bare essentials and careful emotions. The cast captures that quality beautifully - like the water that is running out, everything is conserved.
Fresh: Reichardt trusts her audience, encourages her viewers to feel comfortable in the stillness and the quiet, and to draw their own conclusions from an ending that's as profound as it is enigmatic.
Fresh: If you allow its windswept silences to work on you, "Meek's Cutoff" gathers its own snakelike sense of momentum...
Rotten: Boring.
Customer Reviews
Exquisite
This film is EXQUISITE. It's extremely slow and artistic so don't watch if you're not into that. If you are, you will find this quite extraordinary. Kelly Reichardt is tremendously talented, and the acting is all great.
Don
This was the slowest most boring movie I have ever watched. If your having trouble sleeping purchase this movie!
A really good western
For those not familiar with Oregon history, Stephen Meek and Meek's cutoff are right out of the history book. That said, this movie is not so much that story as it is a bigger one, how we as Americans have made bad choices about our relationship to the Earth and to the native peoples of this continent. In reality, Stephen Meek led 200 wagons full of settlers on a tragic 'shortcut' across the Oregon desert . In this movie, director Kelly Reichardt has narrowed to cast down to a few to give us a very intelligent, well-acted morality play. If you are looking for an action-packed western, then this movie is not for you. But if you like smart, nuanced acting and dialogue, then consider this superb film.
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