John Suits's Civil War-era Western, refreshingly centered around two clever women, unfortunately gets a bit stale in the final stretch, but until then The Isolate Thief is a gripping cat-and-mouse story.
It's 1865, and young Adeline "Ada" Horn (Mackenzie Foy) is alone and in charge of a remote Union Army outpost in the High Cascades. Her father, a Major-General and Pinkerton detective, died some weeks earlier. One night a bandit called Perry (Joe Pantoliano) breaks in, looking for food. Ada realizes that he has hidden something he stole, and she easily finds it: a bag full of gold. She decides to take it herself and hides it.
Not long after, she comes across an injured young woman (Odeya Rush) in the woods. She finds a group of Union soldiers, led by Colonel "Fiddler" John Good (Sean Bean), whom the woman seems to belong with. The Colonel and his men, Red (Jack Kesy), Calvin (Ty Simpkins), and Ten Charlie (Martin Sensmeier), descend upon the outpost, at first assuring Ada that everything will be OK. But it soon becomes apparent that the men are not who they seem, and, worse, they are looking for something.
Foy (of the Twilight and Conjuring movies) excels in her first grown-up role as the cunning and steely Ada Horn. When we first see her in The Isolate Thief, she attempts to shoot a hungry wolf with her father's old-timey musket. The musket misfires and leaves her unconscious. She wakes up, goes back inside, calmly reads a medical book, cleans and dresses her own wound, and finishes with a gulp of whiskey (recommended by the medical book). She's always thinking, even planning ahead. (She addresses the portraits of her late parents, informing them of her plans.)
Odeya Rush's Emily is her opposite, a young woman whose wisdom comes from bitter experience and hard luck. Happily the villains are just as clever. Sean Bean's "Fiddler" knows when to show kindness and warmth and when to exert pressure. He even confesses at one point that he admires, and has grown fond of, Ada's "sass."
It's too bad, then, that the movie turns into a fairly typical shoot-out at the end, which hardly seems worthy of such shrewd characters. Otherwise, director John Suits keeps up a tidy pace and makes fine use of the chilled, harsh locations and weather, making The Isolate Thief worth a watch for horse opera fans.
