Amended, including rating, 6-4-24
Taylor Sheridan takes Wind River and fills it with Hollywood gases 'til it's just another predictable, easy to plot, typical soap opera that calls on the usual off-the-shelf paper-thin stock characters.
Yellowstone has little attachment to its setting & lifestyle, other than the cinematography and wardrobe. Subtlety is not welcome here. The beauty and excellence of Wind River is flushed away by the apparent need to have Costner's character utter a near endless stream of pithy little aphorisms. Compare his performance here with what he did in Open Range, and you'll see how shallow is the opportunity for him to bring his best.
This is not a great 'Western', any more than Field of Dreams is about baseball. Where Wind River portrayed its setting with honesty & accuracy, not hiding & not embellishing, Yellowstone seems addicted to exaggeration from the smallest look on someone's face to the largest political and family battles. Sheridan risks losing his greatest talent of finely hewing dialogue, and superb directing so that viewers can enter the settings of films, and forget that they're listening to written dialogue and watching a carefully planned and orchestrated work of art. He has been masterful in his other work. Not here.
Yellowstone offers nothing original, and plays too closely with stereotyped characters. Sheridan teases viewers early in the opening, with an outsider character (Kayce), seemingly close to Jeremy Renner's in Wind River. But, the fact that he has to TELL viewers through dialogue of some throw-away extras, rather than show us, is a perfect example of the sad differences - there are many - between his best and his slide into mediocrity.
As the series - even in the first season - continues, it actually gets worse: more trite, more clichéd, more stupid characters (the campaign 'genius' who is about as stupid as 5th-grader running for class president; Kayce, the endlessly self-destructive brat with no redeeming qualities; Kelly Reilly's character, the daughter Dutton, who is the most unlikeable and the most obvious). In the opening of the 2nd season, they even bring in the old cowboy sage who is a bottomless font of Hallmark channel wisdom.
It's a shame. I wanted to like this, especially after being profoundly impressed by the subtlety and raw honesty of Wind River. But, no, Sheridan is cashing big checks, here, by delivering typical Hollywood trash. And, obviously, a lot of people have been initially entranced. We'll see if it holds up. I suspect Sheridan will get a lot more opportunity to produce and write this level of 'hit', but it's going to be at the expense of the truly high-quality work he did before this.
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After watching every episode, midway into the 4th season, I better understand the attraction. Yellowstone IS a masterpiece of the seriel melodrama genre. Sheridan recognizes the deep American connection to the Western realities and myths. This includes a fundamental desire for Justice, irrespective of its relationship to Law in any given circumstance - a desire to have clear definitions and accountability.
Yellowstone always artfully has several threads going at the same time, at a variety of time-frames for development and resolution. Managing this complexity is a challenge well-met by Sheridan, Costner and colleagues.
Per earlier criticisms, the writing (and sometimes) acting can get heavy and simplistic. But, overall, once we get used to the identity of the series - accept its internal consistency - we can appreciate the superior craft and sublime beauty.
There are MANY examples of EXCELLENT acting, which is also a credit to the directing and writing. It is a HUGE pleasure to see some faces we haven't seen for awhile, and see the respect given to the creative world, in general, with memorial notes at the end of several episodes.
Again: there are holes and gaps in Yellowstone, and it's not entirely free of typical Hollywood cliches and forced bits to drive a story arc. But, accepting Yellowstone for what it is let's me enjoy what it truly has to offer, and the authenticity of how it delivers.
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