Sutherland Hated 1st Cut Of ‘Forsaken’

I put up a review of ‘Forsaken’ at the weekend, a long awaited team up of Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, in a western about a gang of criminals destroying a local community.  The film is a wishy washy Little House on the Prairie episode, whereas it should’ve been at least somewhat harder.  And originally it seems it was.

I saw the first cut of the film and I was appalled because it was really just a film about a gunslinger, and it was an action film. The relationship between the father and son was peripheral. I complained about that. I was so disappointed, but maybe I hadn’t talked enough with the director. I don’t know. But, Kiefer worked it out. Kiefer took it and re-edited it. I don’t know whether he talks about that. He’s probably more discreet than I am because Jon is a friend of his. Now, it fulfills what I was hoping for, and what we were working on and doing.

That is what Donald Sutherland said.  So we have a movie that was presumably supposed to be about a shell of a man, a killer, dealing with the temptation to kill criminals, turned into an angst fest, thereby removing anything that convinced us that he was ruthless.

Sorry, but I’m going to have to go ahead and call this a Sutherland vanity project here.  The director was probably right.