Casa Grande

Casa Grande
Starring Lou Diamond Phillips, John Pyper-Ferguson, Christina Moore, Kate Mansi
Directed by Juan Pablo Arias Munoz

For the last few years there's been an uptick in Western-style television series that centers on family dynamics including "The Madison," "The Son," "Longmire" and most famously "Yellowstone," which has spawned numerous spinoffs. These types of shows are set in the wild west (sometimes in the past, sometimes in the present) with a big family that has their struggles and successes, but you know essentially what you're getting into. "Casa Grande" is essentially a long episode of one such show set on the big screen, and would've fared a lot better if it had joined the other Western-style shows littering the television landscape - but that's not to say it was a bad movie, just needed more depth to it.

After murdering two ICE agents who were about to steal away Mael Morales (Javier Bolanos) along with his parents Rafael (Daniel Edward) and Ximena (Loren Escandon), Hassie Clarkman (Madison Lawlor) goes into hiding with Mael as the police are searching for them and the missing ICE agents which were buried by the Clarman patriarch Sawyer (John Pyper-Ferguson) on his expansive ranch. The Clarkmans are a powerful cow-herding family led by Sawyer and his wife Susanna (Christina Moore) along with their adopted daughter Hunter (Kate Mansi), and whom has a lot of undocumented immigrants (including Rafael and Ximena) who work for them.

When lithium is discovered near their ranch, Roy Reyes (Lou Diamond Phillips) wants to buy Sawyer's land so he can harvest it and acclaim more wealth, but Sawyer refuses the lucrative offer because he wants his family to grow up on the ranch, which leads to an escalating war between the Reyes family and the Clarkman family, with Hassie and Mael returning to tend to Sawyer, who's dying from an incurable illness.

There is a lot of story to be told in "Casa Grande" that, as I said earlier, would've been ripe as a television series. There's a lot of characters that could've been more developed, but as it is I oftentimes forgot who was who. There's turmoil aplenty that comes both from outside and inside the Clarkman family - so much that you could've done a whole season on that alone. The struggle between the Clarkmans and the Reyes is akin to the Hatfields and McCoys in modern day, with the visual landscape something Taylor Sheridan would drool over. There's nothing essentially wrong with "Casa Grande," but it was like a snack when you wanted a full meal.

There's a lot to unpack in this movie, and a lot of moving parts that go along with it. We got the family struggles which, in no particular order, includes Hassie and Mael being on the run, Hassie's pregnancy, Hunter struggling to fit into a family that's not hers by blood, Susanna's desire for Sawyer to sign the contact, and Sawyer's desire to see his family lineage continue to live on the land despite knowing his time is up soon. This is just their struggle internally, but when you throw in Roy Reyes' desire to take the farm at any cost, and you've got acres worth of powder kegs waiting to go off. They do in spectacular fashion, but everything is so rushed it's hard to fully connect with any character, even though I had my favorite, which was Hunter. Played by Kate Mansi, Hunter was the hard-nosed, no-nonsense daughter with nerves of steel who served as Sawyer's right-hand woman, and she more than held her own against anyone who went against the family.

That's not to say the other characters were boring. John Pyper-Ferguson's Sawyer was a corrupt protagonist, a man with dubious methods even if his only goal was to keep his family safe, and comes off as a complex, multi-layered character. Christina Moore's Susanna is more a caricature of the longsuffering wife, who wants Sawyer to sign over the property so they can provide for their family, and isn't given much more to work with.  Madison Lawlor's Hassie is a unique character all her own, having been on the run after killing the corrupt ICE agents but returning home where she basically hides out in plain sight, but also has her own struggles as to be her own woman and not what her parents are. This makes for fascinating family dynamics without the Reyes' interruption.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays the villainous Roy Reyes with another caricature of the typical Western villain with everything but a handlebar mustache to twirl as he metaphorically has Hunter and Hassie tied to railroad tracks. Still, due to his immense acting prowess, he makes Roy as multi-layered as Sawyer, but much more evil in his motives. 

The movie is essentially an episodic tale where different events happen in this tete-a-tete between the feuding families. The Reyes' blow up the Clarkmans barn, so they assault their land. The Reyes' poison their cattle, so the Clarkmans ruin their solar panel generators. This goes back and forth, but they soon escalate to murder and mayhem that spirals out of control, leading to an almost cartoonish finale that diminishes the story being told up to that point.

Involving too many characters and too much drama, "Casa Grande" would've served better as a Taylor Sheridan-led drama series rather a full-length film, but it still has its own charms and great performances all around.

The Score: B