Bone Dry is fantastic little piece of sun soaked, revenge fuelled melodrama that serves as a glowing showcase for its two leads, Luke Goss and a ferocious Lance Henriksen. Lean, mean, gritty and reminiscent of 1970's revenge outings, it's a bloody delight of a flick. Luke Goss, an actor who can give Henriksen a run for his money in the intensity department, plays Eddie, a well dressed dude with a suspiciously murky past, winding his way through the desolation of the Mojave Desert. After breezing through a lonely cafe run by a girl (always nice to see Dee Wallace) who clearly has eyes for him, he sets out through a particularly lonely stretch of the terrain, and that's where he finds himself in serious trouble. He's soon stalked by a menacing, mysterious man named Jimmy (Henriksen), who is intent on tormenting, taunting and messing him up at every turn. Jimmy is an ex war monster a man whose taken it upon himself to put Eddie through every ring of hell that the Mojave has to offer, all in service of some deeply buried reasons that emerge from the sand late in the third act, shedding scorching light on the two men's character arc, and giving the film quite the emotional boost. When I say hell, I mean it. Eddie suffers through some unspeakably horrific scenarios, including a scene involving a cactus that will induce mass cringing among audience members. Director Brett A. Hart has a heightened, almost Walter Hill-esque style to his film, with the intensity metre ratcheted up past the maximum, and editing trimmed down to whip smart strokes that put you right in the middle of Eddie's clammy desperation and Jimmy's enigmatic fury. Henriksen spends the first half of the film with his face shrouded, adding to the mystery of his character. He's a master of the craft who slowly lets the breadcrumb trail fall with every portentous mannerism and glowering posture until we finally see what Jimmy is really about. One his best performances. Goss doesn't let the energy sag for a single second, something he has always been great at. There's further work from the legendary Tommy 'Tiny Lister' Jr. as well, filling in another subplot stranded out there in the sand. This one is genre bliss, brutal and blistering until it cools off for a conclusion that cuts the viewer some respiratory slack after the breathlessness of its juggernaut setup. Terrific stuff.

"Bone Dry" was recommended to me by a good friend and promoted as a modest but exciting little thriller with an original setting and decent performances. Perhaps I simply wasn't in a very good mood when I watched it, but all I saw was a dire, derivative and overlong cat-and-mouse thriller without any thrills. Lance Henriksen – mainly off-screen but immediately recognizable thanks to his distinct voice – threatens a seemingly innocent guy (Luke Goss) at gunpoint and forces him to talk a long walk in the Mojave Desert. Eddie's journey on foot through the hot sand is inhumanly cruel and full of ambushes and death traps, while his unseen assailant follows him around in a jeep and armed with a sniper rifle. Director Brett A. Hart's script tries very hard to make us believe that Eddie is just a poor traveler at the wrong place at the wrong time, whereas Jimmy – the voice on the walkie talkie – is a sadist and merciless villain without proper motivation for his acts. But it's more than obvious right from the beginning that Eddie isn't a randomly targeted victim and that he probably deserves every humiliating and agonizing thing that overcomes him. Their excursion in the Mojave Desert quickly becomes tedious and repetitive, and personally I felt the urge to fast-forward towards the predictable "surprise ending". There isn't much character study going on and the vile interactions between the cat and the mouse are dull and pointless. Lance Henriksen's voice gives away a terrifically menacing performance and there are notable cameo appearances by Dee Wallace-Stone and Tommy Lister, but otherwise I can't find any good arguments to recommend this mundane and forgettable flick.

For western fans who have seen both the maddingly nebulous Gus Van Sant 2002 flick GERRY featuring Casey Affleck & Matt Damon (6.2 of 10 IMDb rating) and the 97th most popular movie of all-time, Ethan & Joel Coen's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, director\writer\editor Brett A. Hart's BONE DRY will elicit many echoes of recognition. Hart intentionally leaves viewers at sea in an effort to have them misplace their empathy with protagonist\desert torture victim "Eddie" during most of the film. For those not literate enough to sense which way the wind eventually will blow from the opening quotes of Lucretius and Shakespeare's Richard III, the ease with which "Eddie" starts dispatching random drug dealers in BONE DRY's second half is a dead giveaway of the flip-flopping sympathies due before the final credits roll. While "Eddie's" antagonist "Jimmy" suffers more from not being fleshed out in the movie, he does combine NO COUNTRY's Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's practical curmudgeonness with pneumatic bolt toting contract killer Anton Chigurh's aura of inexorable doom. Being called upon to stand in for both Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem in the same movie certainly is a step up in the world from that PUMPKINHEAD crap for Lance Henriksen ("Jimmy").P.S.--Hopefully Brett A. Hart does NOT have to live down being a blood descendant of the infamous sponging, deadbeat-dad, poser, Bret Harte (1836-1902), author of "The Luck of Roarin' Camp" and other "western" stories. (Director Hart's website makes no connection between himself and his literary or wrestler namesakes, but if he later wishes to pick one, he'd be well-advised to take the grappler.) As America's greatest penman Mark Twain observed, the 19th Century writer Harte (born Francis Brett Hart in Albany, NY) started his career making up "news" from the west for East Coast publications, and--in 20th Century terms--played Zane Grey to Twain's Louie L'Amour. This false Harte was a flash-in-the-pan with just one year of real success, soon leaving all of his acquaintances with his unpaid debts, abandoning his wife and kids with no support, and absconding to die in Europe.

This movie is pretty good. It holds you all the way to the very end. It had a small cast, yet it delivered big time. I hope it comes to the big screen soon. It's a must see. Lance is a veteran actor that has done some bad movies in the past, but he redeems himself with this one. It seems that it was shot entirely in the desert and the scenes were beautiful. I gave the movie 8 stars because of it's originality and the fact that you truly don't know what's going on until the very end. That's the motivation to keep you watching. You want to see what's going to happen next and anytime a film holds you like that, it's a good one. I had the pleasure of watching it on a website that happened to have it and boy was I in for a treat. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it. You won't be disappointed.