A fraternal relation to Jane Campion’s overrated “The Power of the Dog,” indie effort “Montana Story” is the modern-day tale of an extended family, including an estranged brother and sister, preparing for the impending death of the family patriarch.
Cal (Owen Teague) is the first to arrive at the sprawling ranch home where he grew up. He finds family friend Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero) there. Also at the house is Cal’s father, who is in a coma in a hospital bed in the study, where he is cared for by soft-spoken nurse Ace (Gilbert Owuor), who has family back in Nairobi. Cal’s sister Erin (Haley Lu Richardson), who was not expected, arrives suddenly. A small, angry ghost, she is traumatized by her return.
Seven years earlier, when Cal was 15, Erin had written a paper for school exposing her father as a “slimy lawyer,” and a newspaper got wind of it, and her father almost killed her. She expected her brother to protect her. But he was too afraid of his father. Erin observes that her father is now “shrunken and pathetic” and has never forgiven Cal. She is in fact more concerned about the imminent death by euthanasia of Cal’s neglected 25-year-old black horse.
