The sepia-toned intro didn't bother me so much, I guess, but the gunfight did drag on. I guess that was supposed to be the OK Corral shootout? Why dwell on such little points? Because they're portents of doom.I got about 10-15 minutes into the film before giving up. It attempts to set the plot through dialogue that's badly written and has the characters carefully explaining the back story to each other. Ashley whoosis (Elizabeth) has a heart-sinking line early on, when she is asked if "Jack made it up from Texas"...she replies, in her best Valley Girl imitation, "He did, actually." Yessir, it's 1882.Then there's Joseph, who declares in a conversation with Elizabeth that he "doesn't believe in firearms." But when we see a full-length shot of him in the kitchen a moment later in movie time, he's wearing a revolver on his hip. And another few minutes later, after the trio finds a wounded Indian, Joseph the humanitarian is arguing that they should leave him to die.Back in the '40s, James Thurber wrote a short story satirizing the Erskine Caldwell/Tennessee Williams literary style and themes. It consists of 4-5 pages of dialogue (in dialect) among a Southern cracker family; suddenly Thurber breaks it off and ends the story by saying, "If you continue writing for a few more pages, you have a screenplay." Well, it doesn't always work. Continue this script and you still don't have a watchable "B" Western.
... View MoreMy wife picked this up at a redbox with a free code, and it wasn't worth the money. The writing was just atrocious, they didn't even try to get the dialogue to sound like it was anywhere near the 1880s. The acting was so bad I actually joked to my wife that it was the acting of a porn without the benefits, and come to think of it, the writing fits this description as well. As a whole, this movie looked like it was put together by a seventh grader during his free time. Not sure what they were thinking putting this out, but I'm sure the budget was so low that they'll end up making money on this thing even if they only sell 10 copies of it. Don't waste your time, it was so bad I didn't even get 10 minutes into it before we returned it.
... View MoreI have seen TV commercials with better actors! This is another movie I couldn't sit through. Between the paper thin actors and their badly timed attempts at dialogue, and scenes like Tom Berenger sitting at a judge's bench - obviously without a live audience, they show the cheapness of this film and guarantees that it definitely didn't go over-budget (undoubtedly a tiny one). We all get old, but Eric Roberts' choppers sound like they just came out of a glass, and Tom Berenger looks like he's ready to explode. The score was also cheap, and reminded me of 1970s TV. The director chose some shots that make me think he has about as much experience at this as a teenager directing an 8mm school project. Why either Tom Berenger OR Eric Roberts would ever choose to be in something this lame is beyond me. My theory is they owed one of their kids a favor and pulled a Ricky Ricardo. I give what I saw 2 stars, and that's being generous.
... View MoreWhy did Tom Berenger lend himself to this obvious low budget film? One can only guess. Early indicators for me were the cheap effects that were meant to set the historic context, but blurred faces and two bit actors shooting at each other for minutes in brown-tone? Tom appears first as if in a documentary talking with a badly done - ghost like - cut out effect that sets him against a 'western' landscape, introducing more of the context - later on the same effect is used in a court scene, making him look even more like a ghost. These wishful attempts to give the story substance fail and only amplify the minimal acting and storyline. 2 points for the effort.
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