Nick Nolte does a stylish turn as a fiercely gentle and possibly demented preacher (imagine Cotton Mather on acid), and cinematographer M. David Mullen conveys perfectly the bleak, wind-scoured, stark gray emptiness of the high plains desert (Big Sky country indeed!), but otherwise the Polish brothers' dream vision of Montana in 1955 feels forced and bogus - too much of the film is taken up by a David-Lynchesque circus parade of contrived weirdnesses and goofy, inexplicable symbols.