Comment on Moral awakening guides 'The Retrieval'

Shortly after the boy settles in next to a few black fugitives - one silently hands him food - he slips out to alert his employers, white bounty hunters who quickly torch the barn and capture the fugitives, who fetch as much as $600 a head. There's pathos in how Will scrambles for his meager pay and also in his reluctance to feed the fugitives, whining that it isn't his turn. The movie is well cast with solid performers, and if the handsome digital images look overly sharp, as if outlined in razor, he consistently makes the most of his limited resources. John, Oberst and Scott have faces that you want to spend time searching, and the cinematographer, Yasu Tanida, knows how to film African-Americans; here, they don't ebb into shadow because the scenes were lighted for their white co-stars. Despite some talk of the West, he and his fellow travelers are restricted by their existential realities as mid-19th-century black Americans.