Review: Frontier drama 'First Cow' benefits from director Kelly Reichert's thoughtful pacing

You might think of director Kelly Reichert’s latest film, “First Cow,” as a companion piece of sorts to her wagon-train drama “Meek’s Cutoff” — if only for how they both capture the desperation and hopefulness of those settling of the American West.

It also shares its DNA with “Meek’s Cutoff,” since that movie’s screenwriter, Jonathan Raymond, wrote the novel “The Half-Life,” on which “First Cow” is based — and Reichert and Raymond adapted the novel into this film’s screenplay. (Raymond also wrote the short stories that were the basis of Reichert’s films “Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy.”)

But “First Cow” is its own animal, so to speak — a thoughtful, yet tense, look at ambition taking people down dark roads at the end of the Oregon Trail.

Cookie Figowitz (played by John Magaro) has signed on as cook for a band of fur trappers in the Oregon territory, sometime in the early 19th century. While foraging for mushrooms to feed the demanding trappers, he runs into King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant who’s running through the woods to get away from Russians who want him dead, for reasons he never fully explains. Cookie helps King-Lu evade his pursuers, and then he disappears into the woods.

At Fort Tillicum, the trapping party’s destination, Cookie again runs into King-Lu — who is grateful for Cookie’s kindness, and offers the hospitality of his modest shack. Over a campfire dinner and some whiskey, the two men talk about their dreams. Cookie, who apprenticed for a baker back in Maryland, would like to run a hotel in San Francisco. King-Lu just wants to make money, however he can.

The talk then turns to Cookie’s baking skills, and how he could make some delicious fried cakes if he had some milk. This prompts King-Lu to hatch a plan, to sneak onto the grounds of the fort’s wealthy boss, Chief Factor (Toby Jones), and milk the chief’s newly arrived dairy cow. The resulting “oily cakes” are so tasty that King-Lu thinks they could sell a batch to the men at the fort — which would require more milk.

You might imagine how this situation could spiral out of control. What is harder to imagine is how carefully, deliberately, Reichert lets the story unfold — as King-Lu gently nudges Cookie further and further into deception, dangling the hope that their “oily cakes” are worth the risk of angering the richest man in the territory.

Magaro (“Carol,” “Overlord,” “The Umbrella Academy”) neatly conveys, with few words spoken, Cookie’s willingness to please and his naive trust in King-Lu’s judgment. Magaro’s work perfectly supports Lee, allowing the relative unknown to give a breakout performance that defies every stereotype of Chinese immigrants in the movies — and brings out hidden facets of King-Lu’s somewhat larcenous heart.

Reichert moves with her customary pace, not slow but never rushed, allowing time to let us examine the minute details of Cookie’s ramshackle surroundings so we feel them in our bones. “First Cow” lets us experience this frontier life, and feel what these two wanderers — the itinerant baker and the Chinese schemer — wanted to overcome.

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‘First Cow’

★★★1/2

Opened in select theaters on March 6; available for rental on most digital platforms on Friday, July 10. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 122 minutes.