Dead for a Dollar

With all the cheap B westerns lately, finally a decent one comes along.

The cast is superb. You can't beat Christoph Waltz. He does a great job as the bounty hunter. Rachel Brosnahan played her part as a strong female character. I really liked seeing Willem Dafoe in a new movie.

It has a good story. Complements to the writer, director and casting agency. The movie was entertaining to watch.

It didn't have that big Hollywood feel but I enjoyed it very much.

Coming from 50 years of watching a lot of westerns.

I'm afraid after the mishap with Alex Baldwins movie "Rust", we may never see another decent western.

Terrific director, with a star cast of actors, I was really waiting for this movie to be released and my expectations were pretty high. What a disappointment...

The bad: the first thing I noticed was that the photography was average (at best). Almost tv quality (low level). THAT I am not used to when watching Walter Hill movies which usually have got terrific technical details. Not this time around. Even the sound score sounded average. Bummer.

But even worse the acting performances by Cristophter Waltz and Willem Dafoe were bland. As if they were speed reading their lines without any real gusto.

This looks pretty much like a Corona era movie that has been recently released and has suffered from production and money problems, because I really get the feel this movie was somehow rushed. Bummer.

With the help of a solider a bounty hunter takes a job to search for a businessman' wife who has been kidnapped by a deserter.

Walter Hill returns to directing delivering a bitter sweet Western. Hill offers tension, twists, whippings and shootouts with a great cast including Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Brandon Scott, Warren Burke and Benjamin Bratt to name a few. Waltz and Defoe are on form; but Scott is a screen stealer. Writers Matt Harris and Hill's story has all the Western high jinx you'd want from a genre piece. However, considering Hills past work, the camera work is lacklustre, shaky, the sound design, the scene transitions and colour timing is off, giving it a rough low budget TV feel. This sucks the life out of the great locations sets and costumes that not even the fitting traditional score can lift.

Overall, if your expecting the grandeur of great Western's you may be left disappointed, however, it offers top performances and a good old fashion western yarn.

I'd start by saying Waltz, Dafoe, Bratt and the others are great actors. All did a great job with what they had here. Problem is, not sure what they had here.

The scenes were a bit choppy and kept waiting for a tv commercial to play between them.

Pretty sure I nodded off at one point and missed some, but it made no difference.

This was a western, I think, but not one I'd recommend for western movie watchers. The actors are top notch but just couldn't save it.

I would have tried for a spaghetti western vibe over this 50s American tv series type. The scenes with Waltz and Dafoe were good but the writing, no sir, I didn't like it.

It was simply too elementary. Ah well, better luck next time.

Sure, the film falls short in many aspects. Could have made better use of Willem Dafoe character, especially the demise scene. He had some great acting moments in this movie though, as if born for the Western. Always been a fan of Walter Hill, and this just being a Walter Hill film, raises it in my eyes. I enjoyed the script foe the most part, the acting, and the general pacing of the movie. It does feel a bit studio produced, with very crisp digitally feeling shots, not quite as dusty and dirty as maybe it should be. There is also a very minimalistic soundtrack, which makes the whole thing feel a bit like a TV movie. Still, it' s a enjoyable movie, reminiscent of the Spaghetti Westerns of old.