The dust never settles in Trinity, Montana. It sticks to the boots of men who have killed for gold, for justice, for the promise of a legacy. Richard Gray’s The Unholy Trinity is the rare Western that oozes from its patchwork seams, messy, muscular, and often mesmerizing. It doesn’t remake the genre, but it serves up its bones with grit and fire.”
The title is a moral accounting. The unholy trio is broken. Gabriel Dove (Pierce Brosnan), the Irish sheriff with a blood-soaked past; St. Christopher (Samuel L. Jackson), a priest of war and scandal; Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard), the son of an outlaw—hanged and green, yet still searching. Every man has his own justice on board. The sins of Isaac Broadway weigh heavily on all these men. Together, they create a triangle of vengeance, mercy, and inheritance — never once in alignment, constantly in motion.
Brosnan is the film’s anchor. His Gabriel is a tired but unbroken fallen soldier, someone who’s killed for children and buried the truth under his home. Jackson’s Christopher is volcanic; his charisma blazes out beyond the frame. Lessard, while uneven and outmatched at times, has earned his arc. The pawn becomes, for him, a sheriff — not through victory, but through survival.
The movie has a solid Western pedigree. The Unholy Trinity serves up shootouts, saloon brawls, and horseback escapes, with frontier justice along for the ride. But it’s the ethical turf that feels most true. Gold runs through the heart of the innocent, but Trinity is a town built on lies and bodies. The violence is consequential. When Running Cub (Q’onianka Kilcher) bleeds, it counts. When Sarah (Veronica Ferres) stays and fights, it’s a stand for native justice — in modern mythic terms, at least; it’s ritual.
Yet the picture warrants its conclusion. Henry’s refusal to take over his father’s house, to leave town, and Gabriel extending the badge—these are not resolutions. They are gestures of survival, shared burdens, and earned places.
Grade: B+. Streaming on Hulu.
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