It’s too monstrous and mean-spirited to please everyone unconditionally, but I found it challenging and honest — and hair-raising enough to work as a modern morality tale in cowboy boots.

A well-made, rough-edged and solid frontier fable with a distinctive look and fine performances all around.

Never Grow Old isn’t a top-shelf western, but it’s thoughtfully made, with something to say about how even in a country that encourages rugged individualism, community matters.

Wearing the proverbial black hat and speaking his menacing lines in a husky, near-whisper, Cusack thoroughly galvanizes the proceedings.

Kavanagh’s second coup was in giving this too-familiar tale just the right star power, with the criminally under-used Hirsch shining as our anti-hero and Cusack, settling into the playing-the-heavy part of his career with as much wit as he can muster.