In 1860s San Francisco, Franco-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy is aggressively courted by a rich Irish art collector. To escape his smothering attention, she falls in love with Danish immigrant carpenter Holger Olsen, and goes with him to his remote cabin in northern Nevada. Highlighting her independent streak, she refuses to marry Olsen and gets a job as a barmaid in the nearby town of Elk Flats, a town dominated by corrupt landowner Alfred Jeffries and his alcoholic son Weston. When Olsen joins the Union Army, which has begun to fight the Civil War, his absence leaves room for Weston to try and seduce Vivienne; he eventually corners and violently rapes her. In subsequent scenes, she is shown pregnant and eventually bears a son.
When Olsen returns from the Civil War after several years, the son named Vincent is about five years old. When Vivienne tells Olsen about the rape, he instantly wants to find and murder Weston until she tells him that Weston had been forced to leave town after murdering several people. Olsen, Vivienne, and Vincent live for a while in peace, but she dies after a short illness diagnosed by a doctor as syphilis. Taking his son, Olsen hunts down Weston in the wilderness and injures him, leaving him to die. Thereafter Olsen and Vincent ride west until they reach the Pacific Ocean.
In October 2022, it was revealed that Mortensen would direct and star in a film he had written, with Vicky Krieps, Solly McLeod, Danny Huston, Tom Bateman, Lance Henriksen, and W. Earl Brown also appearing in the film. Mortensen worked once again with a number of people who worked with him in his previous films including Marcel Zyskind, production designer Carol Spier, art director Jason Clarke, and costume designer Anne Dixon.[4] The film is a joint production between Talipot Studio, Recorded Picture and Perceval Pictures.[5]
In an interview with The Times, Krieps described working with Mortensen on the film: "In the world of Westerns there were not many women. So that was very tough. Of all men he is very soft and open and very 'there'. But still it reminded me why I like to work with women".[6]
Principal photography began in Canada on October 12, 2022 on locations in Ontario and British Columbia, with some filming also taking place in Durango, Mexico. Filming was reported to have wrapped in December 2022.[7]
In February 2024, Shout! Studios acquired North American distribution rights to the film.[11] It was released in Canada, Mexico and the United States on May 31, 2024,[12][13] and in the United Kingdom by Signature Entertainment on June 7, 2024.[1] It was released in Denmark by Scanbox Entertainment on June 13, 2024.[14]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 101 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The website's consensus reads: "A solid step forward for Viggo Mortensen as a director, The Dead Don't Hurt offers viewers a comfortably old-fashioned Western with a satisfying, character-driven story."[15]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 70 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[16]
Peter Debruge of Variety wrote, "How many partners have attached themselves to someone else's dream, then had to adapt when it proves disappointing? Films rarely frame that experience from the woman's perspective, which makes Mortensen's enlightened approach fairly refreshing, even if Vivienne's independence manifests itself in a way that anyone can sense is bad news".[17]
