The Unholy Trinity Review: Good, Bad, and Generic

There’s a certain comfort in the opening notes of a Western, a genre that feels etched into the American landscape itself. The Unholy Trinity kicks up that familiar dust right from the start. We meet young Henry Broadway, a man sent on a grim errand into the vast Montana territory of the 1880s.

His estranged father, with a rope tightening around his neck, uses his last breath not for a prayer, but to command his son to seek vengeance on the sheriff who allegedly put him there. It is a simple, primal motivation that sends Henry on his way.

His journey leads him to the town of Trinity, where his straightforward revenge plot immediately splinters. He finds himself caught between two formidable figures: Sheriff Gabriel Dove, a steady Irish lawman trying to keep a lid on the town’s simmering violence, and the enigmatic St. Christopher, a charismatic stranger whose smile hides a deep connection to Henry’s own dark inheritance.

Trinity itself is a pressure cooker of old grudges and buried secrets, a place where the line between saint and sinner is drawn in the dirt. Henry, armed with his father’s pistol and a heavy conscience, must find his way through this tangle of loyalties.

Following a Well-Trodden Trail

Any fan of the genre will recognize the landmarks on this story’s map: the righteous revenge quest, the buried chest of gold, the morally ambiguous town on the brink of chaos. It reminds me of the countless Saturday afternoons I spent watching reruns of classic TV Westerns; there is a certain comfort in the formula.

The screenplay for The Unholy Trinity follows this map faithfully, rarely diverting from the well-worn path. Henry’s mission hits an immediate snag when he learns his intended target is already in the ground, a discovery that complicates his black-and-white quest and puts him face-to-face with the new sheriff, Gabriel Dove.

The story then introduces its most dynamic element with the arrival of St. Christopher. He reveals himself to be a former associate of Henry’s father, hunting for the treasure his partner double-crossed him for. St. Christopher quickly begins pulling strings, seeing the naive Henry as a perfect pawn in his own elaborate game. The narrative landscape is populated with other conflicts, from Sheriff Dove’s attempts to protect a local Native American woman, Running Cub, from a lynch mob, to a sudden, bloody gunfight in a saloon that adds more bodies to the town’s tally.

The film stacks these events one after another, creating a sense of constant activity. Yet, the episodes often feel disconnected, like a series of dramatic sketches rather than a single, escalating narrative. There is a shortage of sustained tension because the story’s path seems so clearly marked from the beginning. You can almost always see the next narrative signpost from a mile away, which robs the journey of its potential for surprise.

The Gravity of Seasoned Stars

If the film’s narrative follows a familiar map, its energy comes from the magnetic poles of its two veteran stars. It is a classic case of performers raising the quality of the material, and it is a genuine pleasure to watch them work. Samuel L. Jackson, as St. Christopher, is an absolute force of nature here. He is clearly having a wonderful time playing the devil on everyone’s shoulder, delivering every sharp-witted line with a grin that could charm a snake or freeze your blood.

There is a joyful malevolence to his performance; he portrays St. Christopher as the smartest person in any room, a master manipulator who seems to be improvising the script as he goes along. He single-handedly injects a jolt of unpredictable vitality into the proceedings every time he appears on screen.

Acting as the calm center to Jackson’s storm is Pierce Brosnan’s Sheriff Dove. Brosnan offers a performance of quiet, weary dignity. Using his own Irish accent, he crafts a character who feels like an authentic outsider, a man of principles trying to hold back the tide in a lawless land. There is a wonderful stillness to his work that pulls you in. When the action does erupt, he moves with the efficient grace of a seasoned pro, but it is in the quiet moments—the resigned sighs and looks of deep disappointment—that his character truly takes shape.

This brings us to Henry Broadway, played by Brandon Lessard, who has the difficult task of standing between these two titans. The film positions Henry as its emotional anchor, but the character is written with so little interior life that he often fades into the background. Lessard is left adrift, overshadowed not by a lack of effort on his part, but by a script that gives him little to do but react. His eventual transformation from a timid boy into a hardened gunslinger feels sudden because the groundwork for that change is never properly laid, leaving a void at the film’s center.

Echoes of a Deeper Story

Beyond the central trio, Trinity is populated by figures who feel like they belong in a more expansive version of this story. Q’orianka Kilcher, in particular, brings a grounded intensity to Running Cub, a woman with her own quest for justice. Her storyline, however, exists mostly on the periphery, an interesting thread the main narrative never fully pulls.

The same can be said for Veronica Ferres as Sheriff Dove’s capable wife, Sarah, and for a fleeting appearance by David Arquette as a fraudulent priest. These actors bring sparks of life to the town, but their characters are treated like set dressing rather than essential parts of the community.

This sense of untapped potential extends to the film’s thematic ambitions. The screenplay is not shy about its symbolism—a sheriff named Dove, a tempter called St. Christopher, a town named Trinity. It is the kind of naming convention you might find in a medieval morality play, gesturing toward big ideas about good, evil, and the space between. The film raises questions about the nature of vengeance versus justice, the loss of innocence, and the hypocrisy that can fester under the guise of piety.

Yet, these ideas float on the surface. They are mentioned in dialogue but are rarely explored through character action or consequence. They become decorative elements in a straightforward revenge plot, like intellectual window dressing on a simple structure, leaving you to wonder about the more thoughtful film that might have been.

A Beautiful Vista, A Familiar Road

Visually, The Unholy Trinity is often quite striking. Director Richard Gray and his cinematographer, Thomas Scott Stanton, clearly have a deep affection for the genre’s iconography. They use the expansive Montana landscape to great effect, framing the action against stunning backdrops of steep mountains and endless sky.

The film looks and feels authentic. The direction itself is earnest and functional, though it sometimes struggles to give the action a clear sense of geography, leading to gunfights that feel more chaotic than choreographed. Similarly, conversations can be shot in a static, uninspired way that relies entirely on the actors to hold our attention.

That reliance is a recurring issue, especially with a screenplay that feels like two different writers were at work. For every sharp, witty exchange, like Sheriff Dove’s dry response to a fake priest—”Like a Lutheran?”—there are a dozen lines that sound like they were pulled from a dusty trunk of Western clichés. Phrases about justice and blood are delivered with a straight face, lacking the self-awareness that can make old tropes feel new again.

In the end, this places the film firmly in the tradition of the classic B-Western. It is not trying to reinvent the wheel like a revisionist tale, nor does it have the epic scope of a John Ford picture. It is an unpretentious, sincere attempt to deliver a straightforward shoot-’em-up. For audiences who enjoy such films or are simply looking for a 90-minute diversion with some great actors, it works on its own terms. The film’s identity is not in its story, which is a faint echo of better ones, but in the potent presence of its stars and the beauty of the frontier they inhabit.

The Unholy Trinity is a 2024 American Western action film directed by Richard Gray and written by Lee Zachariah. It premiered at the Zurich Film Festival on October 12, 2024, and later had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on June 13, 2025 . You can catch it in select cinemas via Roadside Attractions and Saban Films, and it’s expected to be available on VOD platforms like Prime Video, Apple TV, and on DVD/Blu-ray by August 2025.

Full Credits

Director: Richard Gray

Writers: Lee Zachariah

Producers and Executive Producers: Carter Boehm, Richard Gray, Colin Floom, Michele Gray, Kellie Brooks, Jeanne Allgood, Lionel Hicks, Lee Matthews, Jerome Reygner-Kalfon, Sebastien Semon

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Brandon Lessard, Veronica Ferres, Gianni Capaldi, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tim Daly, Ethan Peck, Katrina Bowden, David Arquette

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Thomas Scott Stanton

Editors: Lee Smith

Composer: Marco Beltrami, Tristan Beltrami