The Sisters Brothers (2018) * * *

Directed by:  Jacques Audiard

Starring:  John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed

Aside from its cutesy title, The Sisters Brothers is an unflinching look at the Old West.   Paid assassins Eli Sisters (Reilly) and his younger brother Charlie (Phoenix) have made a lucrative living as hired killers but have no place to hang their hats.   They sleep out in the elements, fight off filth and disease, and long for a better life which they never realize.    Eli accidentally ingests a spider in his sleep and is sick for days afterwards.    Life has to get better somehow.

Set in the early days of the Gold Rush, the Sisters Brothers work for the unseen Commodore, who assigns them to track down a debt-owing prospector who may have invented a chemical which quickly illuminates gold when poured into a stream.   This would cut down on the labor, and allow the fortune seeker to light out with his stash that much faster.    The plan is, the prospector Hermann Warm (Ahmed) will be captured locally and held by fellow tracker John Morris (Gyllenhaal), who will turn over Hermann to be tortured and killed by Eli and Charlie.    But, John begins to believe in the potential of Hermann's ideas and sets out to California in search of gold along with his quarry. 
Eli and Charlie wish to add John to their list of targets when this change of plans is discovered.

What connects Eli, Charlie, John, and Hermann is their desire for a better life.   When Eli and Charlie rent a hotel room in San Francisco for the night, Eli is tickled pink to be able to use a flushing toilet and eat at a fine restaurant.   It beats spiders crawling into your mouth out in the wilderness.    Eli wants to quit working for the Commodore.   Charlie wants to dispose of the Commodore and become one himself.   John and Hermann want to use their newfound riches to establish a Utopian commune somewhere in Texas.    But, life has other plans, especially when Hermann's get-rich quick scheme has toxic side effects and the impatient Commodore dispatches goons to get rid of all four men.

The Sisters Brothers contains some of the best work in years from Reilly, Phoenix, and Gyllenhaal, all delivering complex, nuanced performances.    The characters have depth and yearnings, all of which may not be possible in such a harsh, unclean world.   But, they will push on and try their mightiest.    The Sisters Brothers isn't a series of gunfights, in fact there are maybe three in the entire film, but instead a story about how these men would love nothing more than not to participate in gunfights at all.    The film doesn't end in bloodshed, but in quiet solitude and finally peace at long last for two of the characters.    Sometimes a warm bed and a hot meal is worth more than all of the gold in the California rivers.