It was the 80s. Reagan tried to remake America as the 1950s, and you know what that meant. Whitefest.
Yes, Danny Glover and Lynn Whitfield are in this movie, but their parts could have been played by anybody. For that matter, so could the cowboys and sheriff, who are all cliches. But, no. It was the 1980s. Whitefest.
There's a reason this decade is so near and dear to the hearts of so many who grew up in it. I'll give you a clue: It's one word.
As far as westerns go, this one recycles everything you've seen before, and in doing so, goes on about 30 minutes too long. At some point, even the gunfights become tedious because they're just a slight different version of what you saw 10 minutes ago. That's hard to do. Even in the John Wayne movies this one tries most to emulate, there's interest. There's build up. Here, it's just one flat sequence of events.
The music is good, so there's that. It's kind of James Horner meets Elmer Bernstein. The direction is good in the sense of having scope. The acting ranges from passable to interesting. But the script needed to cut out the fat. There's a lot of padding here.
I won't go into much detail with the story, not just because it's full of tropes you already know but because it's so thin that talking too much about it leaves little to watch. Let's just say there's a big bad sheriff in a no account town who crosses paths with a disparate group of individualists who have to come together as a force to stop him. Oh, and the sheriff works for an evil landowner.
So, you've seen it before.
In the meantime, heroes are made in the mold of the 1980s.
If that kind of thing gets your motor running, this movie is for you. If you find yourself saying, what, again, well there are movies with both better scripts and more diversity out there. You just have to find them, even in the 2020s.
Yes, Danny Glover and Lynn Whitfield are in this movie, but their parts could have been played by anybody. For that matter, so could the cowboys and sheriff, who are all cliches. But, no. It was the 1980s. Whitefest.
There's a reason this decade is so near and dear to the hearts of so many who grew up in it. I'll give you a clue: It's one word.
As far as westerns go, this one recycles everything you've seen before, and in doing so, goes on about 30 minutes too long. At some point, even the gunfights become tedious because they're just a slight different version of what you saw 10 minutes ago. That's hard to do. Even in the John Wayne movies this one tries most to emulate, there's interest. There's build up. Here, it's just one flat sequence of events.
The music is good, so there's that. It's kind of James Horner meets Elmer Bernstein. The direction is good in the sense of having scope. The acting ranges from passable to interesting. But the script needed to cut out the fat. There's a lot of padding here.
I won't go into much detail with the story, not just because it's full of tropes you already know but because it's so thin that talking too much about it leaves little to watch. Let's just say there's a big bad sheriff in a no account town who crosses paths with a disparate group of individualists who have to come together as a force to stop him. Oh, and the sheriff works for an evil landowner.
So, you've seen it before.
In the meantime, heroes are made in the mold of the 1980s.
If that kind of thing gets your motor running, this movie is for you. If you find yourself saying, what, again, well there are movies with both better scripts and more diversity out there. You just have to find them, even in the 2020s.
