‘Surrounded’ Review: An Outlaw and an Outsider Spar in Director Anthony Mandler’s Top-Notch Western

Joe Leydon
·5 min read
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And now for something completely different: After attracting attention and appreciation with his debut feature, “Monster,” a riveting contemporary drama about a Black high school honor student charged as an accessory to a fatal shooting in his Harlem neighborhood, director Anthony Mandler continues to impress with his sophomore effort, “Surrounded,” an exceptionally well-crafted Western that spins a gripping, racially charged tale of suspicion, deception and survival in post-Civil War New Mexico. Echoes of Sergio Leone, Budd Boetticher and John Ford abound throughout the sturdy screenplay by Andrew Pagana and Justin Thomas. But the movie is less a genre pastiche than a multifaceted character study in which perfectly cast lead players Letitia Wright (“Black Panther”) and Jamie Bell (“Snowpiercer”) do most of the narrative heavy lifting.

It’s 1870, and ex-slave Mo Washington (Wright) is determined to start a new life by journeying westward. Disguised as a man for her own protection, a deception that served the slight but wiry young woman well during her service as a Buffalo Solider, she boards a stagecoach with fellow passengers Wheeler (Jeffrey Donovan), a lawman; Mr. Fields (Brett Gelman), a whiskey salesman; and Mrs. Borders (Augusta-Allen Jones), a very snooty matron who clearly doesn’t shine to the idea of having a Black man as a traveling companion. Mo winds up seated outside the coach, on the footboard, because the driver is equally repelled by the color of his skin.

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One day into their journey, the stagecoach is besieged by notorious outlaw Tommy Walsh (Bell) and his gang. A gunfight ensues, Mo demonstrates expertise with a Remington six-shooter almost as large as her arm, and most of the gang is scattered.  While the other surviving passengers seek help, and reinforcements, in a town miles away, Mo is left behind to hold captive a chained Walsh. Mind you, she doesn’t volunteer for guard duty. But in the world according to “Surrounded,” sometimes a woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do. Especially if she wants to sustain the fiction that she isn’t female.

Long stretches of “Surrounded” play suspensefully and satisfyingly as a two-hander, as Mo and Walsh warily eye each other, trade barbed insults, and only gradually let down their guard long enough to talk about their pasts. Walsh — who sees through Mo’s deception fairly on — presents himself as a charismatic outlaw in the Billy the Kid and Jesse James tradition, a bandit who turned to crime not for personal enrichment but rather to take revenge on a system that brutalized him. (At least, that’s his story, and he’s sticking with it.) He sees, or at least claims to see, similarities between himself and Mo, insisting that they’ve both been traumatized by their experiences, and owe nothing to those who would keep them in their places. Mo isn’t easily seduced by such talk, and initially keeps his prisoner on a tight leash. When Walsh pushes too hard, he warns the outlaw: “I don’t know how long I can hold off my desire to blow your head off.”

Eventually, however, Mo admits to a long-simmering rage fueled by her marginalized status. “I’m a Black woman living in this white world,” she says. “I gotta work three times as hard to get one-fifth of what I deserve. I’m tired of it.” She is deeply religious — the Bible she carries isn’t just to a place for her to stash important documents — and walked away from the Indian Wars because she was repulsed by the violence committed against people “two shades lighter than me.” But the longer they’re left alone to cope with threats posed by vengeful Comanches, a smooth-talking bounty hunter (Michael K. Williams, who scores a knockout in his last film role), and unforgiving elements in the wilderness, Mo is less able to turn a completely deaf ear to Walsh’s offer that she and the outlaw split the bank robbery loot he claims to have hidden somewhere nearby.

Mandler deftly balances the complex give-and-take of his two lead characters with action sequences that are genuinely jolting in their sudden savagery, and effectively conveys just how vulnerable Mo and Walsh are by often viewing them from above as they wander through territory at once spectacular and ominous. Most of “Surrounded” was shot amid the vast landscapes and towering rock walls of the Ghost Ranch in Abiqui, N.M., that once inspired painter Georgia O’Keefe. Max Goldman’s virtuoso framing and fluid camera movement is a marvel to behold — so much so, in fact, that it’s a pity MGM is releasing the movie digitally, thereby denying viewers the chance to savor the DP’s visuals on a theater screen.

Bell is credible and creditable as he emphasizes the teasing ambiguities of his role, suggesting that it’s entirely possible Walsh may be telling the truth in certain situations, even when it’s every bit as likely that Mo’s worst suspicions are justified. (Walsh certainly sounds spot-on when he observes of Mo: “Death follows you around, doesn’t it? Whether you like it or not, there it is.”)  Meanwhile, Wright offers a performance of eloquent physicality — Mo obviously learned long ago when to keep her head down and remain inconspicuous, and when to back up her nervy talk with decisive action — and poignant longing. There is nothing really sexual in the bond reluctantly forged by the two leads. But as “Surrounded” winds its way to its inevitable conclusion, it’s clear both characters, for better or worse, may be experiencing something exceedingly rare in their lives. Something like intimacy.

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