Rating; C+
Dir: Elliott Lester
Star: Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis, Levon Hawke, Esme Creed-Miles
As Tubi Originals go, this is certainly a cut above titles like Married to a Balla. Money was spent on this. Actors you’ve heard of were hired – not Eric Roberts or Michael Madsen either. And, yet… I’ve enjoyed other Tubi Originals more. For every element this does right, it feels as if there’s another done wrong. In the former category, we have the casting, beginning with Dinklage as bounty hunter Reginald Jones – insert “small calibre” joke here, if you’re a dick. He’s convinced to help Jack Parker (Hawke), whose sister Lula (Creed-Miles) was just abducted by vicious outlaw Cut Throat Bill. And if Dinklage is good, Lewis is awesome as Bill. The film finds a new gear of threat whenever she is on the screen.
This is based on a novel by Joe R. Lansdale, though in the source material, Bill was male. Lansdale is likely best-known as a writer of off-kilter horror, for example the book adapted into Bubba Ho-Tep. There is a similar sense of dark weirdness here, and a definite feeling of violence never being far away. Not all of the former quirkiness works. There are some odd anachronisms – a motor-bike here, an Afro (see top) there – and these irritated me more than they enthralled. Indeed, the whole thread where Jack falls in love at first sight with a saloon girl, rescuing her from a life of sin, could have gone. It was time we would have spent, more entertainingly, in the psychotic company of Cut Throat Bill.
On further consideration, the above could be the key issue here. Lewis and Dinklage are so good, certainly leagues above the rest of the cast, anything else becomes an unwelcome distraction. For example, there’s another thread where a posse is chasing Jones because he beat up a local sheriff who wouldn’t pay him as agreed. It doesn’t add very much, instead just diverting from the Jones vs. Bill conflict at the heart of the film. Not that they get many scenes opposite each other: it feels a bit like Heat in that regard. In others too, with one strong character pursuing another (both Bill and Jones need to make up for the poor hand dealt them by DNA), climaxing in an extended gun-battle.
Though set in Texas, the movie was shot in a snow-covered Alberta, the physical cold matching the emotional chilliness on view from just about all the characters bar Jack. Cinematographer Guillermo Garza does good work, giving the landscapes a beauty in contrast to the harsh brutality unfolding. This is a world where death can take many forms, from smallpox through lynching, and is why Lansdale’s horror background is appropriate. It feels as if the Western is undergoing something of a renaissance recently, perhaps kicked off by the Yellowstone franchise, and this is a solid example. However, there are points where it’s considerably better than solid, and these stand in stark contrast to the less successful elements. A lot of potential feels left on the saloon table.