Orlando Bloom’s ‘Red Right Hand’ is a Mediocre Hillbilly Thriller That Would Make a Great Hillbilly Rom-Com

By Seth Freilich | Film | March 4, 2024 |

By Seth Freilich | Film | March 4, 2024 |

Red Right Hand calls itself a revenge crime-thriller, but you could just as easily call it a modern-day Western, as all the key ingredients are there — small-town, local crime, reluctant heroes, violence, and revenge. Set in the fictional Odim County, Kentucky, Orlando Bloom’s Cash lives near his family ranch/farm, where recently widowed brother-in-law Finney (Scott Haze) is struggling to stay above water emotionally and financially, which is even harder to do from the bottom of a booze bottle. Cash also has a close relationship with his niece Savannah (Chapel Oaks). Their personal relationships and attempts at familial healing become complicated when Cash is pulled back into the local crime scene to save the family’s farm.

That crime scene is run by Big Cat (Andie MacDowell) and a pile of her hillbilly cronies. Despite Cash previously having been out, she’s pulling him back in and offers to wipe the brother-in-law’s debt on the farm if Cash does three jobs for her. Crimes and violence happen, mistakes are made, law enforcement gets involved, and Garrett Dillahunt shows up as a bald preacher (and another, now reformed, former Big Cat employ). Smash cut to a booby-trapped meth cook house, several shootouts, some kidnappings, revenge served cold, and a neatly tied-up conclusion (for those who survive). There is nothing particularly new in this movie, and other films and shows have done it better. In fact, I noted to some friends that this movie feels like someone took a notepad that used to have Justified and Hell or High Water and did the detective pencil rub trick on it.

That said, there are parts of the movie that work well for me.* For one thing, it looks great. While Odim County is fictional, the film was shot on location in Kentucky, and it captures the feel and aura of small-town Appalachia well. It feels both expansive and very insular in a way that still can’t really be captured well any other way than taking some cameras to the place. While the plot does not go in any particularly new directions, it’s still well put together and has a few hard-boiled lines that perfectly walk that edge of cool and cheesy.** Dillahunt is great as always, and newcomer Oaks is someone I definitely want to see more of.

*An aside of something that decidedly does not work for me - the title. It is something my lizard brain has gotten wrong every time I’ve tried to type it (and the in-movie explanation for it does it little favors).

**”All I’m in the mood to shoot is this bourbon” and “you can take the silver or you can take the lead” being my two favorites.

Meanwhile, I have a tin ear when it comes to accents, so I honestly cannot say how well Bloom hits his. But it did not distract me. More importantly, I know his performance did not work for some, but it landed strongly for me. He holds the movie well with tension and careful cracking of the hillbilly/tough guy veneer. All the more so when compared to MacDowell, who starts off her performance in a calmly interesting place but ratchets it up in a way that is about five degrees of “too much.” It pulled me out of the third act when I should have been gripped.

Despite Bloom’s performance working relatively well for me, I’d rather see him in something where he can smile, maybe even be charming. I’ll take some of the dour sadness he has on show here, too, but balance it out. The same certainly goes for MacDowell, where the more subtle parts of her performance in the first half could then turn on their head as she ropes Cash back into her crime ring and her heart. Which is why I say I wish this were a rom-com instead. It’s a perfectly watchable Saturday evening flick as a thriller, but it would be an eminently rewatchable romantic comedy.

The one thing it could definitely keep as a rom-com, though, is tying someone to the front of a car like a hood ornament. Cause that shit works in all genres.