If you’re looking for a Western with a great storyline, then mark this down. “Two Sinners and a Mule” and when you do, you’ll notice actress, Chantelle Albers who is one of the two female leads along with Hannah James (Starz’s Outlander). This film is different, and I had a chance to talk to Albers about it.
“I think Westerns have evolved quite a bit actually. They’ve gotten to a point where characters are relatable,” said Albers. “The storyline has almost the same theme and storyline that you would find in a drama. Westerns back in the day were more about action and gun fighting. I feel like Westerns have that today, and ‘Two Sinners and a Mule’ has that. As well as some comedy is thrown in there. The undertones of these modern Western scripts are they have relatable characters. They might be in a predicament or going through the trauma that you might find in a drama that really moves people.”
Growing up on a ranch certainly helped her master the Western lifestyle.
“I think it did. Growing up on a ranch. You really see just how hard life can be. My dad is a cattle rancher,” she stated. “There were so many years where a blizzard would come through. It would kill cattle or maybe the baby calves don’t survive the winter. Back in those days, I feel you had to get used to a loss of life.”
There was a time when Albers was a vegetarian, and then something happened to change that.
“I was a vegetarian for a little bit, and I must say it was awesome. I ate so much and thought it was great. To be honest, I did injure my leg. I was at home at my parent’s ranch. This was a couple of summers ago. My dad asked me if I wanted to go and watch him IV a calf with Randy his partner,” she remembered.
This turned into something entirely different.
“So, I went into the pen, and the momma cow, who was a good cow, while meeting a new person she didn’t know inside of her pen with the new calves. These cows have a real motherly instinct to protect. She saw me and just started towards me. My instincts said, ‘Oh my God’ and I had to run and hop over a metal fence. I got over it but hit the fence so hard that I didn’t clear my foot. It banged against the fence. I had to go to a doctor twice because the swelling was so bad. After that, I thought I should get more protein to heal again. I started eating meat again,” she chuckled.
This movie has some great firearms scenes, and Albers excelled at this.
“I learned how to do the John Wayne cock. I think I learned to do it in a week,” Albers recalled. “I started doing it on one of the rehearsal days before we started filming. Yeah, I think we shot that on week two. It came out pretty well. I was happy with it. The gun is heavy and twirling around it, and sometimes I would hit my bicep, and I would have a few black and blue marks. And you had to hold it out a bit.”
Movie Synopsis:
In TWO SINNERS AND A MULE directed by rodeo champ turned filmmaker Raliegh Wilson, free-spirited ‘Alice’ (Chantelle Albers) and ‘Nora’ (Hannah James) set out for Virginia City to pursue their dream of opening a restaurant after being kicked out of a small Western town for sinful behavior. Out on the prairie, they come across an injured bounty hunter named Elden (Cam Gigandet, Twilight). Hoping to share in the reward, they nurse Elden back to health and help him stalk his prey, Grimes (Cord Newman). But as Nora and Alice both develop feelings for Elden, no one notices that Grimes is now on their tail, and the hunters become the hunted. It can now be seen in theaters across the country as well as on-demand on Prime Video, Apple TV, Spectrum, YouTube, and more.
