The Unholy Trinity, 2025.

Directed by Richard Gray.
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Brandon Lessard, Veronica Ferres, Gianni Capaldi, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tim Daly, Ethan Peck, Katrina Bowden, David Arquette, Anthony J. Sharpe, Beau Linnell, Isabella Ruby, Eadie Gray, Stephanie Hernandez, Dylan Brosnan, Paris Brosnan, Stu Brumbaugh, Tina Buckingham, Nick Farnell, Chuck Mathews, Scott McCauley, and Tim Montana.

SYNOPSIS:

Buried secrets of an 1870s Montana town spark violence when a young man returns to reclaim his legacy and is caught between a sheriff determined to maintain order and a mysterious stranger hell-bent on destroying it.

With a title like The Unholy Trinity, one might be led to believe that director Richard Gray (and screenwriter Lee Zachariah) would have a significant degree of characterization of the individuals within that triangle. Instead, it more or less coasts on nabbing some recognizable faces in Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson to appear in it, while serving as a muddled, bland search for gold, which is really a search for a particular home that is believed to have it buried under.

Young Henry Broadway’s (Brandon Lessard) father built the home. It also turns out that he has constructed numerous buildings within this small Montana town, making the search more difficult for Samuel L. Jackson’s St. Christopher, a man with a history of interaction with him, as evident from his casual smile while watching his execution. Moments before, Henry’s father proclaims his innocence and urges his son to enact vengeance by killing the sheriff who supposedly framed him. The wrinkle in that plan is that the sheriff is already dead, leaving Henry unsure of what to do next as he befriends the new sheriff, a soft-spoken and weary Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan).

That’s a whole lot of convoluted storytelling for a film that’s about buried treasure, and that’s without getting into pasts revealed through exposition and other plot elements including Gabriel’s secret alliance with indigenous Running Cub (Q’orianka Kilcher), whom an angry mob led by Gideon (Gianni Capaldi) has accused of wrongdoing and wants to kill. This is also meant to be somewhat of a coming-of-age story for Henry, who stumbles into his first sexual encounter in a brothel and then wonders if God is punishing him for doing so when a shootout arises.

Speaking of that, The Unholy Trinity is a bit of a disjointed narrative mess that occasionally erupts into serviceable action, even if there is no reason to invest in any of this. It’s a boilerplate Western that only comes alive when Samuel L. Jackson is sayinb “screw it”, putting on an anachronistic, charismatic performance, seemingly aware that this material is generic and needlessly complicated. Pierce Brosnan also brings some class to the proceedings as a dignified sheriff trying to ward off trigger-finger heavy mobs and do right by those deserving.

Perhaps the most glaring fault is that Brendan Lessard is a blank slate as Henry, uninteresting and dragging everything down around him. Whether it’s his quest for vengeance or being placed into a predicament between St. Christopher and Gabriel regarding the gold, Henry is a boring character, difficult to muster up any enthusiasm for, and get behind. If anything, once more is revealed about St. Christopher, he’s the one worth rooting for, although it’s unclear if that’s actually what the filmmakers intended. The Unholy Trinity is a cut above the usual cheap garbage that typically comes from this primarily straight-to-VOD genre nowadays, but that’s far from gold.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd

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The latest entry in a genre one wishes weren’t so burgeoning is HBO‘s Surviving Ohio State, following in the sadly necessary footsteps of documentaries about sexual abuse in the athletic departments at Michigan State (Athlete A and At the Heart of Gold) and Penn State (Happy Valley).

When Surviving Ohio State was announced, anticipation hinged on the participation of producer George Clooney and the possibility that exploring the abuses of Dr. Richard Strauss and alleged negligence by authority figures at Ohio State might topple Jim Jordan, Ohio Congressman and Trump lapdog.

If your interest in Surviving Ohio State revolves entirely around Jim Jordan-related schadenfreude, you can probably skip it. Jordan, who refused to participate in the documentary for self-evident reasons, comes across as heartless and negligent, but the doc lacks any sort of smoking gun likely to dissuade his dedicated constituents, who have known about all of these allegations for each of the last three times they’ve voted for him. 

Jordan, unfortunately, also proves to be a distraction to the filmmakers, especially in the documentary’s second half. Caught up in the they-said/he-said-in-previous-statements disagreements, director Eva Orner largely fails to explore the institutional side of the scandal. I shouldn’t come away from a documentary like this fixated on the name of a single assistant wrestling coach (one who was not and has not been accused of anything criminal) and completely unable to name the Ohio State president, athletic director and key administrators under whose watch these abuses occurred. 

For the first half of its 108-minute running time, Surviving Ohio State is, as its title suggests, a compelling examination of the survivors of abuse and the mechanisms through which large-scale abuse can occur at a major university.

Per a 2019 independent investigation, from 1978 to 1998 Dr. Richard Strauss abused at least 177 male students at Ohio State. Strauss had particularly close ties to a number of Buckeyes sports programs, including fencing, hockey and the wrestling team, coached by Russ Hellickson, with two-time NCAA champ Jordan as his primary assistant. The accusations from athletes involved Strauss’ inappropriate examinations, his tendency to take regular, extended showers in several athletic locker rooms, and grooming behavior escalating ultimately into rape. For some of that time, Strauss worked at the Student Health Center and thus had access to the entire student body, and although he was relieved of certain of those duties after complaints, he retired from Ohio State entirely on his own terms.

A group of wrestlers from the mid-90s are Orner’s primary points of entry, and this group of survivors proves crucial to both the strongest aspects of the documentary and the distraction that leaves it less effective than it could be.

At least a half dozen of those wrestlers tell their stories to the camera, accompanied by filler re-enactments — a shower head spurting water, the hallway leading to a medical examination room — that add very little. The stories themselves are candid and graphic, the haunted men today contrasted with vintage footage of wrestling matches and the various athletes in their high-achieving youth. 

Well aware of skepticism from online trolls who have wondered how veterans of a combat sport could allow this sort of “victimization,” the men talk about the surprise and shame that led them not to respond in the moment and to remain silent about the incidents for decades. It’s the film’s way of setting up the psychology of male survivors and, perhaps more than that, of explaining why the OSU scandal hasn’t received the instant attention and sympathy that greeted revelations from generations of female gymnasts about Michigan State and United States national team doctor Larry Nassar.

The truth is that Jordan’s involvement has contributed to what visibility the Ohio State situation has had. All of the wrestlers present in this documentary have made it clear that Strauss’ behavior wasn’t a secret, and that the coaches all knew about the inappropriate showers and concerns about the examinations, taking little action in Hellickson’s case and no action in Jordan’s case. Jordan has belligerently and vehemently denied that he knew anything at all, which makes him at best an oblivious caretaker of young men.

The wrestlers, plus at least one referee with a story of his own, are completely persuasive, and Orner is able to give a sense of pervasive rumors about Strauss’ creepiness. But that’s been the story since these allegations against Strauss came out back in 2018 — and other than one small, thoroughly speculative detail about Jordan’s actions well after the scandal broke, no new information is provided and no dots connected regarding Jordan or Hellickson or anything else.

The frustration of Surviving Ohio State is how fixated it becomes on Hellickson and Jordan and unnamed figures at the university — Hellickson and the board of trustees, like Jordan, declined to provide any response — without that smoking gun or that key piece of dot-connecting. 

Given how potent the survivor interviews are and how negligible the details are on the systemic failures, Surviving Ohio State would have been better with more focus on the former and less unsubstantiated insinuation — however persuasive — about the latter. 

The documentary is extremely effective at giving voice to those survivors and providing context and understanding for their silence — and that’s extremely important, especially alongside those documentaries about what happened at Penn State and Michigan State. It may not be as sensational and buzzy as bringing down a major university or a sitting congressman, but since Surviving Ohio State won’t do either thing, it’s worth praising the potency of what it does well.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick bring their vivid screen presence and expert timing to The Best You Can, elevating this low-key, Tribeca-premiering dramedy. With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.

It’s the second feature written and directed by Michael J. Weithorn, a co-creator of The King of Queens and a veteran writer on other sitcoms. It’s simply descriptive and not a disparagement to say that with its often strained plot and quick-hit sitcom timing, the film is most likely to appeal to an undemanding audience and an older demographic.

Sedgwick plays Cynthia, whose brilliant husband, Warren (Judd Hirsch, reliably on point), once on the staff of the Watergate committee, is now 83 and sliding into dementia. At the start she appears overly chatty and hyper, a character trying too hard for comic effect — especially when she first meets Stan, a security guard.

Bacon slides easily into the role of Stan, but his character is also introduced as a comic cliché. In the most blatant of the sitcom-style tropes, Stan has a prostate problem and while patrolling neighborhoods at night uses shrubbery as a makeshift urinal. When the alarm in Cynthia’s house goes off and calls him to the scene, he urgently asks to use her bathroom — and what a coincidence, she is the perfect person to treat his problem, as she announces with fluttery, over-the-top enthusiasm.  

The forced comedy calms down a bit when they also begin a friendship, often through text messages, which the actors deliver in voiceover. Cynthia tells Stan about grappling with her husband’s situation, and he confides in her about his fraught relationship with his daughter, Sammi (Brittany O’Grady), a struggling singer-songwriter who lacks confidence. The text technique works more gracefully than in most films, but again lame stabs at humor intrude. As they get to know each other, Cynthia asks if Stan is in touch with his ex-wife, and he texts back, “Only by voodoo doll.” Yikes.

As the friendship between Stan and Cynthia develops, it has some touching moments. Sedgwick lets us see how much Cynthia still loves and is devoted to her husband, and also how lonely his condition has made her. And Bacon is so vibrant as the intelligent, sharp-witted Stan that he makes you wish Weithorn’s screenplay had done more to fill in the character’s backstory. How did this guy turn out to be such an underachiever and such an awkward father?

Wisely, the film acknowledges but doesn’t overplay the inevitable romantic overtones the friendship takes on. And Bacon and Sedgwick never let their status as a well-known married couple in real life intrude on their character’s delicate, tentative relationship. Each gets a long, emotional monologue near the end that they deliver with smooth naturalism. It’s easy to imagine how much more pedestrian the film would have been with lesser actors in those roles.

Weithorn gets strong performances from the supporting cast, notably O’Grady, whose brief musical scenes as Sammi are solid additions to the film. The father-daughter relationship may be the film’s most believable, as we see that Stan means well and tries to encourage her but says all the wrong things.

Olivia Luccardi plays Stan’s younger sometime-hookup, whose sexting with him is played for some effective laughs. Ray Romano appears in a brief cameo in a video call as a doctor friend of Cynthia’s who advises her on Warren’s condition. And Meera Rohit Kumbhani, as Warren’s caregiver, has one of the film’s stronger more unexpected twists when it turns out she has recorded the memories he is still able to recapture.

If only the film had risen to that level of surprise and emotional poignancy more often, with more of the wistfulness that comes to infuse Cynthia and Stan’s friendship and with humor that was less eye-rolling.