Project Detail

The English

Synopsis

Complex drama and knotty themes have long been hallmarks of Blick’s work. Through the lens of the Western, he now turns his attention to the founding of contemporary USA. Blunt plays wealthy English woman Cornelia Locke, who arrives in the United States in 1890 with a bag of cash, hell-bent on killing the man responsible for the death of her child. She’s thrown together in unlikely circumstances with Pawnee scout Eli Whipp (a career making turn by Chaske Spencer), recently discharged from the army and trying to make his way home. Demonstrating a deep literacy with the genre, The English is stylised and angular filmmaking that both critiques and pays homage to the traditional Western while imbuing it with a contemporary sensibility. It’s also a work that speaks acutely to post-Brexit Britain – the imperial confidence of ‘the English’ playing cricket on the prairie is in striking contrast with a 21st-century nation coming to terms with its waning global power.
(London Film Festival)

Details

Year: 2022
Type of film: Features
Running time: Ep 1 and 2; 97 min
Format: Series
Director: Hugo Blick
Producer: Colin Wratten
Executive Producer: Greg Brenman, Hugo Blick, Emily Blunt
Principal cast: Emily Blunt, Chaske Spencer, Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall, Tom Hughes