AllMovie

Director/co-writer Kelly Reichardt’s American frontier drama is an adaptation of Jonathan Raymond’s 2004 novel “The Half-Life.” Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, and Rene Auberjonois, it revolves around an unlikely friendship between a hired cook and a mysterious Chinese man in the 1820s Oregon Territory. The two of them develop a lucrative enterprise that revolves around the first cow in the territory.