We once met a plane with a fuel tanker on a deserted Texas road, and the tanker won, it had more wheels with it. Once a Mexican artel tried to turn the valve of an oil pump, and it struck a spark, and the underground gas was just waiting for it to start fireworks. “Let everything burn with fire, and you and I will sing” – the Kid and Carlson will sing. Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton, the TV series “Fargo”), a crisis manager, a foreman of foremen and just a decision-maker of the oil company M-Tex Oil, whose interests were directly affected by two explosions in a row, will have to dance in these conditions. Norris is a seasoned man, he is strict with oil workers, but fair, he is caustic and cynical with outside scum. He loves a good cigarette, cold beer and his daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph, TV series “1923”).
Exactly on that day, Angie‘s ex-Norris (Eli Larter, “Destination”) calls him to tell him the news, flavored with elegant fabrics: his daughter is flying to him on vacation, his mother is like that, while the ex-wife and her current wealthy spouse are leaving to see off the sunsets in the direction of Micronesia, her mother is like that. After that, he shows a candid cleavage into his smartphone, flavored with the remark “so that he remembers what he lost, the vile son of a bitch!“. Tommy is a modest man, he rents a two-story cottage with his colleagues: a staid elderly lawyer Nathan (Colm Fiori, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee”) and a simplified engineer Dale (James Jordan, TV series “Justice”). Upon arrival of the seventeen-year-old daughter, the neighbors will be provided with a few awkward minutes and piquant situations.
"Daughter!!!"
Meanwhile, the owner of M-Tex, mid-level tycoon Monty Miller (Jon Hamm, the TV series “Mad Men”), to clean up his karma and cover up his poop, turns to one of the largest law firms in Dallas, the office sends a young lawyer Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace, the TV series “The Good Doctor”), a sectarian feminist, to help.”green” energy and other Ayn Rand. It turns out that such herbivorous predators feel sorry for both the planet and the burenok, but these “democrats” swallow people for breakfast. The only thing that could moderate the fury of the Greenpeace advocate was a meeting with a rattlesnake, in which Falcone saw her own reflection. By the way, about the reptiles: the territory on which the subsoil is being developed belongs to the Mexican cartel, and this is another hollow in Norris’s crooked grin.
Sincerity is the key to a strong marriage
Tommy, however, is a man of a philosophical mindset, prefers to take out splinters as they come in, and is ready to share his view of things after a couple of glasses with anyone who has a different point of view. His witty spats with his ex-wife are a separate pleasure, actress Ali Larter seems to be at the peak of all her forms. The dark horse on the board is Norris’s son Cooper (Jacob Lofland, the TV series “Son”), who dropped out of university a couple of months before graduation and got a job as a rookie in one of the brigades of his father’s firm. This horse walks with the letter Sch, the boy is deep in his mind. The story develops slowly, like a walk through the hot ether of West Texas, and organic humor is like refreshing gusts of wind that will not pull off your stetson, but will leave a satisfied smile on your face. However, by the end of the season, the plot threads begin to weave into a tight rope, and the dead coyote hints – in the sequel, midnight will come at noon, and oily darkness will come out of the wells.
Chinese stetson after the rain
In 2007, two dramas about cruelty and death in the good old South were nominated for the Oscar at once. No one else, due to illiteracy, and not political priorities, remembers how much Russian literature had a powerful influence on all Western word-making. Socialist writer Upton Sinclair could not help but rely on the culture of mysterious Russia when he published the novel “Oil!” in 1927. Cormac McCarthy, the main guslar of modern Southern Gothic, published “Old People Don’t Belong Here” in 2005, and the Cohen brothers immediately seized on the book, providing their own interpretation of the text a couple of years later. It should be noted that the southern Gothic was born not from Twain and Poe, but from Gogol and Dostoevsky, who at one time were well known to the Western European and American public.
A couple of years before “Old People …” actor and director Tommy Lee Jones shot “Three Graves”, the notorious southern Gothic, which narrow-minded critics presented to the public, which they consider to be stupider than themselves a priori, as a neo-Western. This most powerful canvas, in which the interpretations of the Old Testament plots of Rembrandt and Brueghel acquire a fresh perspective and a rough cinematic language, was ignored by a feeble bunch of movie people, and did not reach the general public at all. “Gran Torino”, really shot according to the patterns of a western, parable in its essence, proved the greatness of Clint Eastwood as a director and actor for the last time. And yet the Cohens, Jones and Eastwood seemed at that time to be separate fossils, whose disparate work would not be able to revive the Great American Myth. As time has shown, their opuses turned out to be excellent manure for subsequent shoots.
Norris Jr.
Taylor Sheridan proudly wore the label “an ordinary actor” for two decades. Working with Kurt Sutter in the series “Sons of Anarchy” gave Sheridan confidence. In 2015, the film “Sicario / Killer” was released, based on Sheridan’s script by visionary director Denis Villeneuve. The American “blue collar workers”, suppressed by the raging “democracy”, which acquired all the signs of cannibalistic African cults, the film came in handy. The “Democrats”, who saw in the plot the condemnation of “toxic masculinity” (forgive them, Lord, for they do not know it!), also approved the movie. But here’s what’s curious: Sheridan’s heroes are never outspoken adherents of one party or another, they are always just sensible hard workers who, like the heroes of the unepically epic “Wiretapping”, are concerned exclusively with earthly topics: devour, laugh, pay off the bank, wipe out the people of the bank, kill the people of the cartel, save the ranch et cetera. Sheridan takes the plots straight from life: “Landman” was filmed on the basis of documentary programs (Democrats call them “podcast,” Charlie), competently compiled and presented by Christian Wallace. In one of the scenes, the hero of Billy Bob reminds that the whole bullfuckin’ shit, which is used by the “green” fiends of degenerative education, is also made of oil.
The series “Landman” (“Land Surveyor” is a much more appropriate interpretation than “Landowner”, but let good taste judge) offers a lazy, at first glance, journey through the deposits of the Texas Permian basin, where the destinies of many who were looking for honest earnings and those who wanted to be cleansed of sins in the “blood of the Earth” are intertwined. In fact, this is one of those stories that you don’t want to part with. Floating in a pool of oil is a natural satellite of the Earth, a favorite toy of midnight animals. Oily sky, Moon Dogs!
Watch Landman (2024) online (season 1, 10 episodes)
