Down in the Valley Movie Review

John Meyers lives and writes in Maryland. His work has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Spartan, the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. John was a 2018 Best Small Fictions nominee. His website is hammeredinmetal.com

In the movie Down in the Valley, Edward Norton plays a drifter-cowboy named Harlan who quits his job at a gas station so he can go to the beach with a girl he has just met. It doesn’t take long for Harlan to win the girl over: he steals a horse and takes her riding; he impresses her younger brother with his marksmanship, wielding dual six shooters like a seasoned veteran, spinning them on his index fingers and blowing away beer cans from long distance; he speaks in a folksy, respectful manner that is hard to resist. When he meets the girl’s father for the first time, however, there is tension in the air. The father scowls at the cowboy, and then pulls his daughter aside to issue a word of warning. I thought the father’s unfriendly behavior was unusual, but as the movie went on, it became clear he was right to be suspicious. I definitely missed the early signs. It didn’t occur to me that Harlan had a dark side until he shot his girlfriend. I guess I didn’t read the IMDB description of the movie closely enough because I thought Harlan was a legitimate cowboy. I believed he was sensitive and honest. Even during scenes when he was alone in his hotel room, re-enacting parts of classic westerns and lassoing chairs and tables, I couldn’t see that he was a lunatic. The only excuse I can give for why I was fooled by Harlan is that I’ve always wanted to be a cowboy too. When I was six years old I got my first pair of cowboy boots, and when I was seven I told my friends that I knew how to ride a horse. When they asked me to prove it, I said, “Find me a horse and I will ride it.” This never happened. I still wear cowboy boots today and sometimes when I go to bars I get questions about my boots. I usually lie and tell people that I’m originally from Houston, that I once worked on a ranch. After watching Down in the Valley, I began to worry that people might take me for a lunatic. My solution to this problem is to try not to lie anymore. I can’t guarantee this will happen because I’ve been lying my whole life. There’s a small part of me that believes I can be a cowboy -- I just haven’t had the chance to prove it. I think about this all the time, especially in the morning just after I wake up. I tell myself that this is the day I’ll go to work and quit. I start to imagine my new life out west and everything is beautiful. Then I begin the drive to work, get stuck in traffic, spend the day resetting passwords, and by the time I get home I have no energy to do anything. The next thing I know I’m waking up to a new day and fantasizing again. I guess if I’m honest it’s those few minutes in the morning when I’m barely awake and my real life hasn’t yet slapped me in the face that I’m truly happy. I can hope with a clear head. I can see a new path. For a few brief moments, I am a cowboy, I work on a ranch, and my life is simple and pure. It’s almost like a movie.