The Unholy Trinity is a 2025 Western action film that gets the balance right between beautiful photography, solid performances, and a compelling story with convincing turns. The plot follows a young man named Henry, who is evidently a fish out of water in the Wild West, as he sets out to seek revenge against a corrupt sheriff who had framed his father for a murder that he had not committed. Overall, The Unholy Trinity is quite impressive and makes for a fun watch, despite not doing anything pathbreaking for the genre of modern Westerns.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
Set in 1888 in the Montana Territory, The Unholy Trinity begins with a prisoner being ushered out of his cell and taken towards the prison courtyard in order to be hanged from the gallows. The man, named Isaac Broadway, has been given the death penalty for his crime, but what shocks him even more than imminent death is the presence of a young man in the crowd that has gathered around the gallows. This young man, Henry, is actually Isaac’s son, and although the two have been estranged for quite some time, their love for each other is not lost. Isaac is initially scared that some harm will come his son’s way, and therefore he asks the young man to leave the scene, but it is evident that Isaac also feels relieved at seeing Henry after all this time.
After all, Isaac has some important details to share with his son with regard to the fact that he has not committed the crime he is being hanged for, and therefore, he wants Henry to set out on a journey to seek revenge against the ones responsible for his undeserved death. A lawman at an outpost named Trinity, Sheriff Butler, had conspired against the man and had falsely pinned the murder of a couple belonging to the Blackfoot native tribe on him. Thus, Isaac wants Henry to travel to the outpost and kill the corrupt sheriff on his behalf, and the young man is prepared to embark on such a dangerous journey as well. Henry had already learned of this conspiracy from his mother, despite his parents having been estranged for a long time, and it is essentially to get more details, and also to see him for one last time, that he has now come to the hanging.
But right as Isaac is about to be hanged, the presence of another man in the crowd visibly perturbs him, although this man soon runs into Henry at a nearby travel outpost. This man, named St. Christopher, keeps emerging from time to time during Henry’s journey to Trinity, clearly following him for some reason. But as Henry reaches Trinity, he learns of a different complication—Sheriff Butler is now dead and buried behind the local church, and while the new sheriff, Gabriel Dove, is friendly towards him, he asks him to keep his real identity a secret from the townsfolk. Despite having founded the outpost and built most of the facilities there, Isaac is not a popular figure in these parts, and thus, it is only a matter of time before Henry Broadway gets embroiled in a different kind of trouble.
What had happened to Sheriff Butler?
When Henry reaches Trinity and holds the sheriff at gunpoint, he realizes that it is not Sheriff Saul Butler that he is holding hostage but the new man who has been given charge of maintaining safety and security at the small town. It is Gabriel Dove, the new sheriff, who reveals that Saul Butler is dead, after he was murdered by some unknown assailant, and the old sheriff’s grave is also shown to Henry as proof. However, to some townsfolk like Gideon, a man who had fought beside Butler in the American Civil War and had therefore grown to be close friends with him, the murder of the previous sheriff is no mystery at all. Gideon spends his own resources to gather information and finds out that a Native American woman, belonging to the Blackfoot tribe, had committed the murder, and that she is still holed up somewhere close to the town.
The truth of the matter is that it is indeed this woman, named Running Cub, who had sneaked into Trinity and murdered Sheriff Saul Butler, and in order to understand her reasons, it is important to go back to the very origins of Trinity. Initially founded as a small outpost, Trinity was technically built by Isaac Broadway, but when Saul Butler arrived at the place and became the new sheriff, the two men turned against each other. Possibly using his influence as an ex-soldier who had served in the Civil War, Butler took control of the narrative and managed to win over all the townsfolk onto his side. This is why the people at Trinity still hail Butler as a hero and consider Isaac to be a murderous villain, and therefore Dove asks Henry to keep his identity a secret.
Although Butler had won control over Trinity, he still needed to make one last move to ensure that his opponent, Isaac, was no longer in the picture. He had also heard rumors about Isaac having a stash of gold somewhere in town, and he desperately wanted to get hold of the treasure for himself. This is when he murdered a couple from the Blackfoot tribe and pinned the blame on Isaac. Although Isaac had been very good friends with this couple, particularly the man, the murders were made to seem like he had committed them in order to take up more land from the native tribe. Thus, Isaac was arrested and hanged to death for the crime that Butler had committed, and this is why he asked his son to avenge him at the beginning of the film.
However, the murdered couple’s daughter, Running Cub, had found out about the truth, probably because she had complete faith that her father’s friend, Isaac, could never betray the family. Thus, she decided to seek revenge against the villainous Butler, and so she sneaked into town and killed him. While Dove knows this truth, he supports Running Cub’s cause, as he knows all too well that his predecessor was an extremely corrupt and selfish man. Since there is no official proof of Running Cub being the murderer, the law cannot hold her responsible. Nonetheless, Gideon and his men want the woman arrested, but Sheriff Dove keeps protecting her throughout the film.
What does St. Christopher want from Henry?
One of the characteristics that makes The Unholy Trinity a convincing thriller is the fact that each of the characters is driven by their own personal motivations. Most of these motivations are in turn born out of either greed or vengefulness, with perhaps Sheriff Gabriel Dove being the only exception, as his main goal is to maintain peace and prevent bloodshed in the town. St. Christopher, the man who keeps following Henry throughout the film, has his own plan for trying to get close to the young man, for he too is linked to the past of Henry’s father. In the days of his youth, Isaac Broadway marched up to Savannah with the Union Army, and this is where he first met St. Christopher, who was a slave on a plantation owned by a family of bankers.
As the Union Army attacked this plantation in order to arrest the owners and free the slaves, Isaac befriended St. Christopher, who told him about a stash of gold hidden at the place. Together, the two men stole this gold, which was enough to feed their families for generations, and then escaped Savannah. Isaac abandoned his post in the army and decided to travel westwards, along with St. Christopher, and with the help of a Blackfoot couple who agreed to work as their guides. However, Isaac then pulled off a horrible act of betrayal, as he sold off St. Christopher to some paddy rollers and escaped with all the gold, clearly helped by the Blackfoot couple as well. This dark past very brutally reveals that Isaac Broadway was not as saintly a man as claimed in some of the accounts, for he too had misused his power and influence to harm others.
Therefore, St. Christopher is now back after having finally tracked Isaac down at the prison, for only one purpose—to claim his share of the gold that he had helped Isaac steal all those years ago. He had even hired an outlaw to pretend to be a priest and listen to Isaac’s confession before his hanging, in the hopes that the latter would reveal the location of the stash of gold in his dying moments. The priest is seen asking Henry whether his father had told him anything significant before his death, right at the beginning of the film. At present, St. Christopher offers Henry a deal—he wants Henry to help him in the search for the gold, and in exchange, he would happily give the young man half the stash, honoring the deal that he had once made with Isaac.
Why does Nora help Henry?
One of the major moments in the later half of The Unholy Trinity, when Gideon and his men attack Gabriel’s house with the intention of killing Running Cub and everyone standing in their way, is when the young woman named Nora steps up to help Henry. Without her intervention, Henry would have been beaten to death, or at least, the attack by Gideon could not have been stopped in time. However, this twist is not unpredictable at all, as Nora’s character had been teased to us throughout the duration of the film. Although we are never directly told much about her, there are enough hints to suggest who she is and what she stands for.
While Nora is referred to as the sister of one of the men running in Gideon’s gang, she might actually be just a young woman who has been kidnapped and is being forced to work for the gang of criminals. Even if she is indeed the sister of the henchman, she is clearly neglected, abused, and treated like a slave. Therefore, Nora is fiercely against the gang and its members, and she also has a moral compass that lets her distinguish between right and wrong. Although she doesn’t really get the chance to express her emotions, she grabs every opportunity that comes her way, like when she lets Henry escape after killing Asa.
Thus, when she gets a similar chance to take agency for herself towards the end of the film, Nora once again decides to act against the gang members, including her own (supposed) brother, and help Henry instead. Since this act is a kind of liberation for herself, Nora shoots the goon and cuts down the rope holding Henry, letting him reunite with his friends in the process. As she then explains as well, Nora was considered a loser by the gang members, and this was her act of proving that she is courageous as well. At the very end of the film, it is revealed that Nora continues to live a normal life in Trinity, since Gideon’s gang has been wiped out, and she is possibly adopted by Gabriel Dove and his wife, Sarah.
Does Isaac’s stash of gold really exist?
With Gideon now out of the way, Dove and Henry head back to town, specifically to the church, where St. Christopher has already arrived to recover his much-desired stash of gold. St. Christopher had cunningly led Gideon’s gang to the sheriff’s house, leaving the town empty of any goons who could possibly intervene in his search, and had also realized that Isaac had hidden his gold under the church. Henry, on the other side, had come to the conclusion that his father had either not stolen any gold or that he had used up the entire stash in building the outpost town, meaning that the stash did not exist anymore.
A final confrontation takes place inside the church, with St. Christopher trying to shoot Henry, and the latter even gets shot by a rifle that had been set to fire as a booby-trap. But before he can do any more harm to the protagonist, St. Christopher is shot dead by Sheriff Dove, who then also rescues Henry out of the burning building. While St. Christopher’s desire to kill Henry might seem like his attempt at revenge against the sins of the young man’s father, there is a different angle to it as well.
After all, St. Christopher had indeed found a stash of gold buried under the floorboards of the church, and he seemingly did not want to share it with Henry, because of which he made one final attempt to get rid of Henry and Dove. But as St. Christopher lies dead and the church building burns down, the gold stash remains hidden under the debris, with Henry never realizing that his father had actually hidden the hoard at the place. Perhaps Isaac had asked his son to return to Trinity to seek revenge on his behalf because he knew that the young man would eventually find out about the gold and get hold of it as a kind of family heirloom. However, this does not happen, and the stash of gold, which had triggered the chain of violence, remains hidden at the end of the film.
Do Henry and Running Cub become lovers?
During The Unholy Trinity’s ending, Henry is seen renouncing his ownership of the house where Sheriff Dove and his family live, despite the building technically belonging to him, as Isaac had built it. Since Henry had come to Trinity only to avenge his father’s death, he does not have any need for the material possessions. Instead, he goes over to the nearby river and spreads his father’s ashes to honor Isaac’s memory. Running Cub, who has recovered from her injuries, is seen accompanying him, and they ride away from Trinity together, possibly in search of some new adventure.
While it might appear like Henry and Running Cub are now lovers, there is no hint in the film to suggest so. Rather, Running Cub was revealed to have been a sort of sisterly figure to Henry when he was just a child, as she had taught him how to ride horses and to go about in the wild. Thus, in The Unholy Trinity’s ending, Henry and Running Cub seem to be partners, but not in a romantic sense, and their friendship is now stronger than ever.
