2 friends are stranded in a desert after searching for a mysterious briefcase. | Far West

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Far West is used with permission from The Potter Sisters. Learn more at http://omele.to/40mhrxx.

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Two men, Jack and Russell, head out to the desert in search of a mysterious briefcase. The two friends find it in the striking landscape, and they’re overjoyed to discover it’s as full of money as they hoped.

But before they can head back, they realize it’s too far and too close to nightfall for them to hike back safely. They decide to camp out, despite not having anything to keep warm. But as night falls, their motives begin to change, along with their prospects of survival.

Directed by Emily and Grace Potter (who direct together under the Potter Sisters moniker) from a script written by Grace Potter and C. Bailey Werner, this short drama explores a friendship between two men that changes when they uncover a life-changing amount of money. They both have plans for the sum, which they both harbor high hopes for. But their greed gets in the way of their loyalty to one another, leading to uncertain outcomes for both.

Visually, the film blends the wide-open vistas and landscapes of the traditional Western, and its shots of the landscape are often stunning, emphasizing the mystery of the desert and the smallness of the humans roaming within it. But as the storytelling unfurls, it develops the psychological penetration of a classic crime noir story full of betrayal and manipulation, becoming a study of how money changes two friends.

It does so with great economy, particularly with the lack of spoken dialogue, which lets the images do much of the communication. Part of the sparseness of dialogue comes from the fact that the two main characters are deaf, though their deafness seems coincidental to the story at first. Actors Russell Harvard and Julian Moiwai don’t need many words to embody two men edged with ordinary desperation, and they also have the laconic nature of the Western genre, where men’s actions say more than words. And as night falls, their actions prove their intentions are not as straightforward as they initially seemed, along with their friendship and solidarity.

Compelling, evocative and deceptively simple, “Far West” has a somber straightforwardness as it charts its conclusion, and as one decision leads to another, fate also seems to rear its head. The result is a final set of images imbued with an almost Biblical sense of irony and justice, a pitiless and portrait of human folly that is no match for a larger, harsher world. We scramble within it, with our small hopes and concerns, under the illusion that we can become masters of our fate — only to realize we’re subject to forces larger than ourselves.

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2 friends are stranded in a desert after searching for a mysterious briefcase. | Far West
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