Hickok

Western movies is not usually within my preferred genre of movies to sit down to watch, but I was given the chance to watch this.

And I must admit that I was a little bit intrigued as I saw that Kris Kristofferson was on the cast list. But it turned out that he had only a minor role in the movie.

The storyline was entertaining, for sure, although it suffered from being generic and predictable. There certainly was a good flow to the movie, and good progression in the storyline, so you never felt that the movie came to a halt.

The acting in the movie was good, and the actors and actresses were putting in good efforts to bring their characters to life on the screen.

But somehow I sit here with a feeling of 'was that really it?' now that I have watched the movie.

Surely this movie is one for true fans of the old classic western genre.

Lazy, terrible script, one dimentional characters, flat and boring. Exactly the same kind of stupidity yyou find in series like CSI and similar garbage.

This had so much historical fodder for storytelling and they did this. The writing was terrible, the direction worse, and many of the actors seemed to be just phoning it in fora paycheck.

The most sad thing of this had to be Kris Kristofferson who seemed to be reading from a slow loading dialogue delivery system of some sort. The only actors that did well were those with few paychecks behind them.

Action and SFX were beyond poor and the entire film was a train wreck in that you can't stop watching to see if it can get any worse.

Kris and Bruce? It's time to retire. You had great runs but it has gotten down to the point that peeps might think you just don't give a shot anymore. Loved you both in your earlier stuff.

Disappointing is a word I would normally use when discovering a below par movie, but I did not expect much from this movie to begin with so the bar was set quiet low in my expectation. Somehow the director managed to lower that bar considerably. Terrible direction, no style of any kind whatsoever.. terrible sound editing,, a gunshot sounds like someone farted loudly.. awfully clichéd dialogue, wooden acting at its worst, lighting was poor, cinematography was childlike and vacuous,. This was a calamitous endeavour from start to finish. Watch it only to learn how not to make a western.

Wild Bill Hickok (Luke Helmsworth) comes to Abilene, a western cow town that needs taming and Mayor Knox (Kris Kristofferson) makes him the Marshall.

This is somewhat disappointing because there are good acting scenes and poorly acted scenes. You decide how correct I am. The scenes with Hickok and Dr. O'Rourke ( Bruce Dern) were very good; and also the dialogues between Hickok and Mayor Knox were spot on; and I even liked the banter between Hickok and John Wesley Hardin (Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau). All the rest of the scenes and dialogues were not as good, but the talks between Hickok and Mattie (Cameron Richardson) his love interest were okay. Trace Atkins is okay as Poe, the owner of the saloon. He originally likes Hickok, but after Hickok affects his business by not allowing guns in town, he does everything to have his boys kill Hickok.

Was I looking for a shoot-out between Hickok and John Wesley Hardin? Of course. Checking with Wikipedia we see that Hickok and John Wesley Hardin did know each other and when Hickok told Hardin to turn in his guns, he did. But in the movie he didn't. In the movie, Hickok made him a Deputy Marshall.

Yes, Hickok does pretend that John Wesley Hardin is not John Wesley Harden for if he was, then Hickok would have to arrest him because Hardin is a wanted man. Interesting take here.

Was this a really good western? No. A lot of stuff needed work, mostly quicker responses from the players at times. Let me say this: if the bad guys were better bad guys, then this may have saved the movie. Didn't happen. For example, the bad guys shoot into a cabin where Hickok and Mattie are and throw a stick of dynamite into the cabin. Hickok tosses it outside, but the bad guys think they killed Hickok and didn't check. See? This was just one small example.

Also I kept hearing that this was Drover town, but I didn't see one cow. A Drover is someone who drives cows to market. We should have seen at least one cow. Bummer.

A sort of interesting aside: I noticed most players wore their guns in not the usual place on their hips.

All in all this was watchable, and yes, somewhat disappointing, too, and we wished it was better. (5/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: Yes, almost when Hickok and Mattie get together. Language: Small stuff and not much of it.