Another reviewer states that no reason was given why the body of Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman) was being held captive by the disfigured bruja (Cote de Pablo). Actually there was. In the narrative, it was mentioned that Ransom killed a priest who was her brother, so she was keeping his corpse in recompense until Ransom's brother could be brought to her for revenge. By the way, 'bruja' means 'witch in Spanish, which goes a long way to explain why de Pablo's character seemed to be mystically inclined.The contrarian in me wants to completely disagree with virtually all the other reviewers here who slam the film as miserably bad. Although I can't go all the way on that, the picture is hampered by a film making style that wants to be stylistically clever, but winds up getting in it's own way very much of the time. The vertigo inducing jump cuts tend to confuse more than clarify, and add no coherence to the story. And when the story introduces characters like the Dwarf (Peter Dinklage) and the drug addled Siamese twins, it feels more like a Western episode of 'Carnivale' than anything else.I think I mentioned it in another review that there must be some unwritten rule somewhere that states that every Country singing star has to appear in at least one Western movie. This time it was Dwight Yoakam's turn, and even though he's fairly competent as the vengeful preacher of the Pride Clan, I can't say that it was an auspicious role. Kris Kristofferson of course has been in more than his share, and I get the feeling that he's offered these roles because he just naturally looks the part of a grizzled old cowboy.It goes without saying, even though almost all the other reviewers said it, that this film won't appeal to everyone. I didn't think it was terrible, but for those of a short attention span, enduring it might invite The Preacher's admonition of knowing the torment of hell.

So you want to make a western, but not just a western. Nooooo. This is gonna be a Work of art too. So we add some weird color scheme and a lot of fixed camera settings on plants and desolate landscapes. Some strange music on top and let the plot unfurl really slooow. Now this takes the western up to art level, right? WRONG!! This is the recipe for a bad movie. Same thing happened for the french adaption of the comic Blueberry. What you get is a pretentious nothing. There have been several westerns deserving the art stamp. (The Searchers, The good bad & ugly, The unforgiven, to name a few), but these always worked within the boundaries of how a western should be, namely entertaining. This one definitely doesn't fit the bill.

More a short film than an actual film, "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride" tries to distinguish itself as a Western that seems to challenge just about every convention that Westerns used to stand for.The question is, is that really a good idea? The plot, in a nutshell, is as follows: a woman (Juliette Flowers) is trying to recover the body of her deceased lover (Ransom Pride) from a malformed mystic, who will turn the body over, as long as she gets in return the brother (Champ Pride) of the deceased lover.We really don't know why Champ is important to the mystic...or even why she's holding the body of Ransom Pride in the first place...although we are given a rather difficult to follow explanation in the end if you make it that far. If anything, the explanation makes events that happen in the film seem even more unusual! Just as unusual is the idea that Champ's Father Early (Dwight Yoakam) hates Champ for what happened to his wife, who died when Champ was born. In fact, he makes a pilgrimage to recover both Champ AND Ransom's body from the mystic...after he discovered that Juliette was planning on trading Champ for Ransom's body.Naturally he holds a grudge against Juliette, who he blames for Ransom's death, and suckering Champ into servitude, so he plans to kill her...until he is shot dead...by Champ! This film is plagued by several factors, among them: Unusual action edits which, after an action scene takes place, are for some reason reversed and choppy.A strange assortment of characters, including the mystic (who looks more like a Voodoo practitioner than a Native American or Mexican priestess), a little person, a drunken black veteran of the Civil War (I think) and pot smoking siamese twins.Other scenes, which don't seem to make any sense at all, except if you consider them in the film to expand on the running time.I'd put the running time of the film officially at around 80 minutes...but if you were to trim out the scenes that make no sense and those strange rewinding segments, I suspect you'd cut that down to between 50-60 minutes! Jon Foster is absolutely gorgeous in the film...and Scott Speedman and Lizzy Caplan aren't terrible to look at. It's just a little eye candy, but it's no where near enough to save THIS film!

this movie sucks really bad. why anyone would anyone would want to see this again would be a stupid idiot. I rented it because i thought a western movie would be good but its horrible. i the begging when a old women shoots the lover(male) its good but as the movie progresses throughout the movie the only good points are when the small dude and the Siamese twins got into a gun battle with a bunch of hire for gun. they both died. the dad, and the lover both die. its so boring that i fell asleep. Cote De Pablo play a bad job in this. the only good actor that played in this movie was Lizzy Caplan because she just is a good actor. She also acted in hot tub time Machine as April. Dwight Yoakam played a drunk Reverend.