_The Sisters Brothers_ is like a French barbecue: it tries to be authentic but gets lost in all the style.

Classic Westerns are classic because they are simple stories based on basic archetypes: good, evil, love, hate, greed, revenge... They are, essentially, retellings of Greek myths in cowboy days. And it's still possible to tap into this story-driven ethos as illustrated by films like _Young Guns_, _Hell or High Water_, or my personal favourite, _Bone Tomahawk_.

But there's another school of filmmaking bent on making sweeping, character-driven epics that typically end up as little more than rambling tales of which one can make neither head nor tails. Which is fine for the character but bad for the horse he's driving, because the horse usually winds up lost.

_The Sisters Brothers_ is a beautiful film (with special mention to the wonderful score by Alexandre Desplat (_The Tree of Life_, _The Shape of Water_, _Isle of Dogs_...)) containing wonderful vistas and better than average performances, but the story line that insists on running out for two full hours stretches itself thin.

Slathering barbecue sauce on duck à l'orange doesn't make it Tex-Mex.