Hell on Wheels

Matt Pizzolato argued this past week on his blog that what we need is more people reading westerns. The world, he says, would be a better place. Troy Smith devoted a blog page to an essay on “Gunsmoke.” Both writers celebrate the heroism and values to be found in western stories, where we can find men and women of principle, courage, and character.

Now, this is a review of the AMC series Hell on Wheels, which I got around to watching when it became available on DVD. I’d never got much past the first episode on TV because I have zero patience for commercials. Given all its production values, this story of men and women swept up in the grand scheme to put a railroad across the country is compelling entertainment.

But I’d argue that it’s a poor example of the kind of western Matt and Troy are talking about. For me, the main problem with Hell on Wheels is the total vacuum at the center of it. Bohannon, whom I take to be the main character, is a cipher. Not for any bad acting. Anson Mount is fine. All the acting is fine.

However, Bohannon’s only reason for walking the face of the earth is to avenge the deaths of his wife and son, who have died along with a household servant at the merciless hands of a detail of Union soldiers. He will seek them out and kill them one by one, even it if means [SPOILER COMING] taking the life of the wrong man.

Anson Mount as Cullen Bohannon

There’s little I can see that’s heroic about Bohannon. He may establish an uneasy alliance with the black section worker Elam Ferguson (Common). He may say that he freed his slaves before the War, though not from any principle except to please his wife. But as he admits to the preacher (Tom Noonan), he is already dead and headed for hell.

By comparison, Common’s character is thoroughly alive, and comes far closer to being a man of principle and courage. The clearest evidence is in his dogged determination to act and be treated as a free man. His attachment to the prostitute Eva (Robin McLeavey) and the intimacy in the scenes between them also show him to be living, breathing, and feeling, unlike the haunted, sullen Bohannon.

As an avenger, Bohannon is fearless, but vengeance and justice are not the same thing. We know this from the traditional western which, as in Jack Schaefer’s Shane, permits killing only in self-defense. The real west may not have been quite like that. Read Carol Buchanan’s God’s Thunderbolt: Vigilantes in Montana for an example. But the values that a man like Matt Dillon represents call for the civilized use of the judicial process for capital crimes.