From the acclaimed writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel comes a neo-Western with an emotional tremor hiding beneath it. Two estranged siblings (Haley Lu Richardson, Owen Teague) return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved, confronting a deep and bitter family legacy against a mythic American backdrop.... (Full plot summary below)
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From the acclaimed writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel comes a neo-Western with an emotional tremor hiding beneath it. Two estranged siblings (Haley Lu Richardson, Owen Teague) return home to the sprawling ranch they once knew and loved, confronting a deep and bitter family legacy against a mythic American backdrop.
Leave your thoughts about Montana Story.
| The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Chandler LevackThanks to the specificity of Richardson’s performance in particular and Giles Nuttgen’s gorgeous cinematography (the movie is shot on 35 mm), Montana Story evokes a grandiose style of American frontier filmmaking, somewhere between John Ford and Kelly Reichardt. See it on the largest screen you can find. |
| The A.V. ClubMark KeizerThis is a deeply felt work anchored by two earthy performances that stay small-scaled no matter how melodramatic the slowly revealed secrets become. |
| Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleThere are a handful of filmmakers – Wind River director Taylor Sheridan comes to mind – who carry the torch of the American Western forward into the present. Like Sheridan’s films, Montana Story introduces an element of finality to the American West. |
| The Film StageDan MeccaMcGehee and Siegel are at the top of their game, building to an emotional and memorable climax. Nothing is too shocking, but nothing happens exactly as expected either. One could look at the premise of this film and convince themselves they’ve seen it before. They’d be wrong. |
| Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarWhile the events that transpire are minimal, the poignancy of “Montana Story” resides in watching these two strangers, once inseparable, reconnect now as different people but with the same scars. |
| TheWrapLena WilsonMontana Story remains a worthwhile exercise, largely because it puts two stellar actors through a monumental emotional gauntlet, and they pass with flying colors. |
| RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzThere are many rewards to be found here, not the least of which is a skill at staging scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends that are entirely dependent upon the subtle interactions of a few actors who live or die on the basis of the words they've been given to speak, and the silences they've been encouraged to inhabit. |
| Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMontana Story is a personal film, a small story told under the Big Sky. Those skies can make any story feel epic in scope — they frame tales as mythology in a way. But in Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s film (they wrote and direct), those same skies are so grand and far-reaching they can make you lose your perspective. |
| San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleIt moves, makes us care and involves us in the genuine drama of two young people trying to heal themselves. The austere beauty of the locations doesn’t hurt either. |
| IndieWireRobert DanielsMontana Story doesn’t reinvent the Western wheel. Rather it offers tender mercies as a sentimental work that explodes in well-earned fury. |
