Surrounded (2023)

Letitia Wright is Mo Washington, a former slave set free during the Civil War, but still struggling to find true freedom five years later.

She cooked and cleaned for the soldiers who set her free, studying their movements until she could pass herself off as a man and become a Buffalo soldier.

She saved her pay to buy a land in Colorado — a gold mine — and that’s where she’s headed, forced to ride on the back of a stage as it departs from Brushwood Gulch, New Mexico.

Mo peers at her prized land grant repeatedly, tucking it into a Bible for safe-keeping. She prays, asking God to just let her reach Colorado.

Then bandits strike, led by the notorious Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell). In the confusion that follows, a passenger is gut-shot, a couple of Tommy’s men are left dead in the dirt and the horses run off with the stage, sending it tumbling over a cliff, along with a female passenger and Mo’s prized property rights.

Tommy Walsh? He’s captured. The stagecoach survivors decide to have Mo watch over the outlaw while they rush off for help.

Tommy quickly figures out that Mo isn’t the man she’s pretending to be. And he soon attempts to form a new alliance with the woman holding him captive.

After all, he’s ditched thousands in bank loot somewhere in these here parts that he’d be willing to share with a new partner.

And if that doesn’t tempt Mo, maybe her thinking will change with the threat that his surviving gang members are likely to return to rescue him, leaving her badly outnumbered.

Letitia Wright as Mo Washington, posing as a man in her effort to find true post-slavery freedom in Surrounded (2023)

Jamie Bell as outlaw Tommy Walsh, trying to talk Mo Washington into setting him free in Surrounded (2023)

Review:

A promising opening and a wonderfully filmed attack on the stage will have genre fans thinking they’re about to take a memorable ride through the old West.

Not so fast, folks. No sooner has Mo taken charge of outlaw Tommy than the film bogs down to a crawl, punctuated by occasional bursts of violence.

Tommy repeatedly promises Mo she could trust him as her new partner. A black bounty hunter (Michael Kenneth Williams as Will Clay) shows up out to the dark, vowing that Mo should trust him instead.

And Mo seems to be listening. Why? Why doesn’t she just bash Tommy in the mouth with the butt of her rifle to shut him up?

Her entire background — the very basis for her character — screams that she can trust no one but herself and rely on no one but herself.

Unfortunately, viewers don’t learn about much of that background until late into the film, making it difficult to feel an emotional attachment to Mo, who’s very much the strong and silent type.

In the end, we’re left with a movie that genre fans will want to watch, because well-acted, bigger budget Westerns are so few and far between. But is it a film genre fans will want to watch repeatedly? Probably not.

This marked one of the final roles for Michael Kenneth Williams. He rose to fame as an actor on the HBO series “The Wire” in the early 2000s. He died of a drug overdose in 2021 at age 54 before this film was released.

Michael Kenneth Williams as Will Clay, the bounty man looking to form an alliance with Mo Washington in Surrounded (2023)

Jeffrey Donovan as Wheeler, a stage line representative, with Tommy Walsh under his gun in Surrounded (2023)

Directed by:
Anthony Mandler

Cast:
Letitia Wright … Mo Washington
Jamie Bell … Tommy Walsh
Michael Kenneth Williams … Will Clay
Jeffrey Donovan … Wheeler
Kevin Wiggins … Curly
Brett Gelman … Mr. Fields
Luce Rains … Goldie
Andrew Pagana … Andy
Augusta Allen-Jones … Ms. Borders
Herman Johansen … Sheriff
David Manzanares … Bartender Ernie
Keith Jardine … Pike
C.M. Petrey … Tuco
A.J. Voliton … Kid
Ben Painter … Rufus
Peter Diseth … Larry
Austin Rising … Puck Harris

Runtime: 100 min.

Brett Gelman as Mr. Fields, watching a gang of bandits approach the stagecoach in Surrounded (2023)

Kevin Wiggins as Curly, the stagecoach guard, eager to strike back at the bandits who attacked in Surrounded (2023)

Memorable lines:

Tommy Walsh to Mo Washington, after the rest of the stage survivors have left for help: “They left you to the wolves. And night is coming.”

Tommy Walsh, trying to win Mo over: “You know humankind can be awfully unkind if it deems you don’t belong.”

Mo Washington to Tommy Walsh: “We all got bad stories to tell. But not everybody takes it out on the world like you.”

Tommy Walsh, proposing a partnership, on his terms, to Mo: “You make a deal with the devil, you follow the devil’s rules.”

Letitia Wright as Mo Washington, left to guard a dangerous outlaw in Surrounded (2023)

Augusta Allen-Jones as Ms. Borders, the stage passenger Mo Washington tries to save in Surrounded (2023)

Will Clay, trying to convince Mo to align herself with a fellow black: “You got your 40 acres? Your mule? You feel free? I sure as hell don’t.”

Mo Washington: “I had to learn, as a black woman living in this damn white world, that I gotta work three times as hard to get one-fifth of what I deserve. And I’m tired of it.”

Sheriff to Mo, whom he momentarily considers hanging: “It seems, if there is a God, he wanted you alive. So just in case, I ain’t gonna interfere. But you’re gonna clean up this mess. You’re gonna bury all those bodies and then be on about your way. And be thankful for it.”

A comanchero holds a knife to the throat of Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell) in Surrounded (2023)

Letitia Wright as Mo Washington and her captive Tommy Walsh (Jamie Bell) sense trouble ahead in Surrounded (2023)