Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Red Right Hand’ on Hulu, Where Orlando Bloom Battles Backwoods Drug Queenpin Andie MacDowell

In Red Right Hand, now streaming on Hulu, Orlando Bloom plays a guy who used to be bad but overcame his past to focus on the good: family, faith, and just doing what he can to get by. Trouble is, Andie MacDowell lives in this county, too, and her character’s thriving trade in “hillbilly heroin” makes her all-powerful in this part of Appalachia. There’s obvious trouble brewing from the opening moments of directors Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms’ film, and when things invariably get messy in Red Right Hand, all that’s left is for whoever’s still standing to report back to God. Not for penance, but for justification. 

RED RIGHT HAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: In his cabin on a rambling piece of family farmland, Cash (Bloom) smokes dirt weed joints while doing shirtless pull-ups. “For God, for family, for survival.” That’s the mantra he upholds with his alcoholic brother-in-law Finney and adolescent niece Savannah (Chapel Oaks) as they tend to their livestock and keep their little farm running. But money’s tight in these parts, out in the misty green hills of Kentucky, and Cash can only grit his teeth when Finney admits he gave the note on their property to Big Cat (MacDowell), the sinister hill country drug lord who controls all the opportunity around here. Cash and Big Cat go back. Years before, when he was a junkie alongside his friend Wilder (Dillahunt), who is similarly reformed and now serves as the town preacher, Cash worked for Big Cat as her go-to enforcer. So he heads up the rise to her sumptuous mansion. “Wanna tell me why you’re putting the screws on my family?”

Big Cat only got Finney and the farm on her hook so she could get to Cash. Three jobs, she says. Three jobs and the debt is paid. He has plenty of reason not to believe her, but no real choice if he wants to save the farm and protect Finney and Savannah from her gruesome twosome goons, known as the Buck (Kenneth Miller) and the Doe (Nicholas Logan). Cash agrees to Big Cat’s terms, naturally the jobs involve eliminating her drug biz rivals, and of course Cash has to get his hands dirty doing more of the stuff he thought he left behind. And don’t think the law’s gonna be any help. While Deputy Parks (Mo McRae) is an ally, the sheriff is all the way inside Big Cat’s pocket. It’s no shock when Big Cat goes back on her word, and even less of one when Cash has gotta take matters into his own scarred hands. 

Red Right Hand has Orlando Bloom doing a wavering southern accent, Andie MacDowell in full sicko mode – Big Cat is admittedly a pretty great name for a murderous queenpin – and Garret Dillahunt popping up every now and then to lend some gravity to the situation. Beyond that, you’re on your own.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Back in 2018, Garret Dillahunt played the heavy in Braven, a film with a scale similar to Red Right Hand that was elevated by his performance alongside better-than-they-needed-to-be turns from Jason Momoa and Zahn McClarnon. And Red Right Hand helmers Eshom Nelms and Ian Nelms also directed and wrote the intriguing, noirish thriller Small Town Crime.

Performance Worth Watching: Andie MacDowell conjures a good bit of menace as Appalachian drug boss Big Cat, really leaning into pulpy lines like “I don’t think I’ve ever seen knees shatter like that” while rocking a long twisty braid, bolo tie, and a snakeskin blouse, her assault rifle always close at hand. 

Memorable Dialogue: “I’ll handle it,” Cash says after Big Cat’s main pair of thugs lay into his bro-in-law Finney with meaty paws and the butts of their pistols. “I know how these animals feed…”

Sex and Skin: Nothing but a random male ass cheek.  

Our Take: Red Right Hand is not named for the epic 1994 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds song that has since become the theme to Peaky Blinders. No, it travels back to the source material of that title phrase, John Milton’s 17th-century poem Paradise Lost, which in this film is evoked in sermons delivered by Garret Dillahunt’s preacher character Wilder. Divine vengeance. The “red right hand” of God. Or, in Orlando Bloom’s case, his character’s perceived spiritual license to bring down furious anger on Andie MacDowell’s Kentucky hill country drug lord and her gang of vicious goons. Which is a whole mouthful to try and justify a script that just can’t chew it all. MacDowell, Bloom, Dillahunt, and newcomer Chapel Oaks give the material some heft whenever they can. But it’s not really enough to justify the empty motivations of these characters, and the lengthy stretches of generic B-movie pacing. By the time we arrive at a shootout finale that was obvious from Red Right Hand’s opening moments, there’s not a whole lot of meat left on the bone.

You can hang with it in moments, though. There’s some fun in seeing MacDowell play against type, Bloom and Dillahunt manage a solid two-man game when it finally comes down to vengeance time, and in a movie that doesn’t scrimp on its savagery, there are some pretty grisly henchman kills, like when Bloom’s Cash pulls a “Here, hold this” with a bear trap ready to be sprung.

Our Call: Red Right Hand is a tentative STREAM IT. You’ve seen versions of this many times before, and done a sight better than this. But Orlando Bloom and Garret Dillahunt have their moments, and Andie MacDowell basically steals the film as the outrageously evil Big Cat.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.