"Cole Younger & The Black Train" helmer Christopher Forbes' oater "The Last Gunslinger" gives westerns a bad name. This amateurish epic, complete with bland acting, forgettable dialogue, and scenes that wear out their welcome, is abominable. Mind you, the premise about a revenge-driven former Confederate searching for the dastard that burned his wife alive isn't new. Trouble is neither Forbes nor his Michael Boswell bring anything new to the tale in their retelling. By the way, "The Last Gunslinger" looks a lot like Boswell's own "Vengeance Without Mercy" (2013) that cast country western warbler Cody McCarver as Charles Holley and Jerry Chesser as Animus Smite. Chesser makes a better villain than McCarver makes a hero. Everything about this western, which is set in either Virginia or North Carolina, makes it seem more like an eastern. The production looks as low-budget as an empty bucket. The entire cast looks like they need to go on Nutrisystem. Indeed, the only thing that I liked about this eastern was its arsenal of firearms. The hardware looked authentic. Christopher Forbes is a better producer than a director. Suspense and tension are no where to be seen. The movie lacks a sense of pace. The pictorial compositions are formless. The images veer between color and black & white. The lighting doesn't add atmosphere. The gunfight at the stable had potential, but Forbes orchestrates it like a poor high school skit. One of the adversaries looks hilariously overweight. There should have been bigger clouds of powder smoke gusting off the guns. At times, "The Last Gunslinger" degenerates into a dead pan parody of western conventions. Boswell provides the non-actors here with pages of loquacious dialogue, and nobody ever seems to know when to shut up. Few of the cast members look like they belong in a period setting like this. The photography of the railroad train was okay. The DVD cover art makes the protagonist look like a traditional westerner with a face chiseled out of stone. Paunchy, pickled-face Cody McCarver doesn't conjure up any charisma. The character of Charles Holley was dressed with as was Jerry Chesser's Animus Smite. McCarver sings well, but he desperately needs acting lessons and a better director. "The Gunslinger" sheds a little blood, but the violence never becomes so profuse that you'd want to shut your eyes.
Review of American Gunslingers
