Moses Washington, who goes by Mo, is a former Buffalo Soldier and freed slave seeking to make a new life in the post-Civil-War Wild West. Mo is also a woman disguising herself as a man; she’s played by Letitia Wright.
When Colorado-bound Mo is relegated to the back of a stagecoach, one anticipates “Surrounded,” directed by Anthony Mandler, might play as a rollicking, racially enlightened genre variant. Alas, the commonplace writing, along with performers whose idea of playing “western” seems to derive from some pretty bad movies, renders the proceedings less than compelling. When a band of outlaws overtakes the stagecoach, Brett Gelman, as a whisky peddler, recognizes one and observes, in a ridiculous faux-British accent, “You’re Tommy Walsh.” Augusta Allen-Jones, as the coach’s stock snooty older female, asks, “Tommy Walsh, the bank robber?” Sure enough, it is.
Tommy is played by a convincing Jamie Bell. He’s captured after the stagecoach itself sees a calamitous end. Some survivors go off to get help while Mo is left to watch over the chained-up criminal.
Aside from being a notorious bank robber, Tommy is a onetime Union soldier and an individual of some perspicacity, detecting immediately that Mo is not a man (the audience has known this all along). Soon Mo and the bad guy head off into varied picturesque landscapes, and encounter varied nemeses, the most energized played by Michael K. Williams in one of his last roles.
Wright’s lean, long face is sometimes all hard angles, and she enacts the largely stoic mien of her character with weight. If “Surrounded” had carried through its overdetermined premise more assuredly, she’d have made a compelling hero/heroine here.
Surrounded
Rated R for language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms.
