Sam Shepard’s “True West” is a play about sibling rivalry between two brothers gone kablooey, and for the first third or so of the new film “Raymond & Ray” on Apple TV+ starring Ewan McGregor and Ethan Hawke, there are hints that we’re headed in a similarly intriguing direction.
A dark comedy from writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, it feels like it’s adapted from a play (it’s not), with the focus on the two estranged half-brothers of the title who reunite upon the news of their abusive father’s death. The old man’s final wish: That they attend his funeral and dig his grave.
With his tidy haircut and overall appearance, Raymond (McGregor) is the more buttoned down of the two, whereas Ray (Hawke) is the low-key outcast with his tats and guns and long-kicked heroin habit. That dynamic is very much akin to “True West” — in the play, the brothers are ultimately revealed to be two sides of the same coin — and it also reminded me of a Broadway production more than 20 years ago when Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly would switch roles on alternating nights.
