The Mountie

The Mountie (U.S.: The Way of the West; U.K.: The Ranger; France: Lawman) is a 2011 Canadian Western film directed by S. Wyeth Clarkson, co-written by Clarkson, Charles Johnston, and Grant Sauvé. Though drawing on elements of Canadian northern genre fiction, the film was pitched as a neo-spaghetti Western by Clarkson to its star, Andrew Walker. Walker plays a disgraced North-West Mounted Police officer dispatched in 1894 to survey the Yukon for a new garrison, where he encounters a small group of Russian settlers in a town in desperate need of law and order. The cast includes Earl Pastko as Olaf, a Russian Orthodox priest of dubious character, Jessica Paré as Amethyst, Olaf's scarred daughter, as well as George Buza, Tony Munch, Matthew G. Taylor, and John Wildman. Plot In 1894, Corporal Wade Grayling, an officer of the North-West Mounted Police arrives in a remote and lawless settlement in the Yukon territory where the Commonwealth wants to build a fort. Upon his arrival, Grayling finds a hanged man, a death he correctly deduces to be connected to a small community of Cossacks - primarily Latvians and Russians - who have set up camp nearby. Olaf, their religious leader, says they killed the man for having stolen from them, the suspended body left as a warning to any other potential thieves. The Cossacks are unhappy about a fort being built on the land they have settled, which means moving. After an encounter with other visiting Cossacks, Grayling realizes why, and why they killed the man: the community's economy is based largely on the opium trade. Olaf maintains and harvests poppies. Grayling has personal reasons for putting a stop to it, as he was disgraced in the eyes of his superiors since he was found in a Chinese opium den the previous year. Grayling wages a one-man war against Olaf and the visitors. The matter is complicated by the need to protect the innocent, particularly Olaf's two daughters, the disfigured Amethyst, and young Cleora. Several scenes are bridged by Robert Service poems read by Kestrel Martin, who portrays Cleora, Amethyst's young sister. The poems include "The Men That Don't Fit In", "Clancy of the Mounted Police," and "The Land of Beyond". Cast