Shadow on the Mesa

The thing about reviewing every single film you watch, is that occasionally you run out of things to say. Such is the case now.

Shadows on the Mesa is a made-for-TV western which is roughly fifteen times better than I thought it would be. It has a good plot, characters that have more depth then you'd expect and a Star Wars-esque twist on your typical 'love interest'.

The shoot outs aren't that great, but that's because this was originally made for The Hallmark Channel, which is targeted at all the family. So don't expect any blood, swearing or other material that might make it unsuitable for those out of nappies to watch.

It doesn't need them anyway, as the movie is good enough to not have to bother with trying to attract a more 'adult' audience. I liked it. End of story. 6/10

"If I get a hint that he had something to do with mom's death I will kill him." After Wes (Brown) returns home he is told of his mother's death. After being told of who may be behind it he rides off for revenge. At this point I could almost just write one blanket review for every western that comes out and just change the movie titles. LONG GONE are the days of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and even at this point Kevin Costner westerns. I'm not sure what happened but somewhere along the way the genre got relegated to made-for-TV movies on the Hallmark channel. I'm not saying that Hallmark movies are a bad thing but when you want to see a western a little roughness is needed in them. The swagger of John Wayne is replaced by the pretty boy look. The intensity of Eastwood is replaced with soft emotion laden characters that don't seem to fit in the west. If you want to get your wife or girlfriend to watch a western with you then show her the new ones. If you want to show her what a real western should be show her anything by John Wayne. Overall, another dagger in the genre that used to be known as western. Apparently all it takes to be a western now is people in cowboy hats riding horses. I give it a C.

The main character Rawlins has 1 more facial expression than Arnold as the terminator. He smiled once, maybe twice. His acting chops are wooden and I think the only reason they chose him is because he has those "squinty" gunfighter eyes that are in vogue for these types of movies. All of the costumes were not "aged" properly, same for the hats. Rawlin's holster was brand new, it looked like it was fresh out of the box, it had no evidence that he had used it before enough to be a "fast draw." It certainly didn't look like he had practiced with it. The rifle shots would have gone straight through the buckboard and hit the men taking cover behind it. And if I ever see another movie where a building blows up while the actors never look back it will be more irritating than the whole of this movie was. I can't see how this movie got good reviews. The acting was horrible.

Some has been actors and some you hope you'll never see again run around in some kind of western with no story or entertainment value what so ever - if you like to watch good movies.

But it is a dream come true if you are a hair dresser.

For some reason in this western people have always the best styled hair and make up.

Even after having been in the wild outdoors or after a shoot out.

I guess the makers of this crap think that people from that time period only left the house perfectly styled and groomed.

It's like watching project runaway - the western edition.

Every minute I expected that crazy Heidi Klum to show up saying "Love your style honey when you get on that horse"

Well, what would you expect from Hallmark - the zero talent movie factory?

Skip this disaster and save your brain.

First off, I love Kevin Sorbo. I love westerns. And I really liked his previous western, which I believe was also on the Hallmark channel. This movie had several problems that kept me from enjoying it:

1) The music and dialogue tracks were very poorly balanced. The music was overpowering and the dialogue was a little hard to hear many times.

2) The music in general was very generic, and the background music seemed to be almost the same, scene after scene. And what's worse is the music NEVER stops for more than a few seconds at a time. LITERALLY. It's in your face the whole movie, and I found it cloying and grating on my nerves.

3) Kevin Sorbo has a secondary role in this, and isn't in it nearly as much as I expected.

4) The main character carried the quiet, mysterious stranger type a little far, and it seemed pretty cheesy to me.

And just overall the movie didn't flow very well. It just kind of seemed like a bunch of scenes cobbled together. It never really pulled me in. I hope he does another western more similar to his previous one, but this one I could've done without.