The Legend of Hell's Gate: An American Conspiracy

Sadly the least I could give this (film?) was one star. Had there been anything less, I'd have clicked it. I've seen every cowboy ever made and this is right up there with the worst.

The best part of the movie was that a lot of it was so dark that I couldn't see what was happening. I understand that dimming the lights is supposed to set the mood but,,,, total darkness??? It was so dark that the plot was also hidden from view. I've seen the sepia thing done before, especially interior shots, to try to give the film a period, old time, down and out, depressed look but in this case, it came off as if it was a copycat move and pressing to make up for a lack of,,, everything a good movie should have. There may have been some good scenery shots but any parts of the movie that you could actually see, looked as if they were all shot on a foggy day, 10 minutes before sundown. The scenes jumped around so much that I couldn't make any connection. And the individual scenes were filled with,,,, filler; unrelated, irrelevant, clock eating junk. In all honesty, I watched only 45 minutes and I had absolutely no idea what it was about. There was no suspense, no drama, no continuity, no plot, nothing to keep me watching.

I know nothing at all about anyone connected with this movie, except Buck Taylor, so they may all be first timers. The production quality, sets and costumes were all pretty good. The acting, direction, editing and camera could use a bit of work but wasn't bad. It was easy to see that there was a lot of effort but,,, without light bulbs and a story,,, it was all for naught. I think they all should give it another try, but for God's sake,, next time,, wait for a story. See: Shane, High Noon, Unforgiven, The Tall T, Hondo.....

I wanted it to be good, because I like the Western genre, but this wasn't... I wasn't given any reason to like any of the characters... There were no memorable performances... I might even say it was as bad as "Grown Ups"... You might think maybe the lack of budget caused it, but I think the story couldn't have been saved by a larger budget... Other items to not...... The guy playing Doc Holliday tried to sound like Val Kilmer... It didn't work... The guy playing the Irish guy tried to sound like an Irish guy... It didn't work... Movie just seemed to end without rhyme or reason... And they spelled "Enid" as in Enid, Oklahoma "Edin" in the closing 'what happened to these characters' thing they put up to explain what happened to characters when the movie just ended.

Some 15 years ago I wrote a piece 'eBooks: the future of storytelling' in which I speculated on how technological advance changes the way stories are told, indeed, changes the stories themselves. Amongst other then rather fanciful prophecies I foretold a device which would project odour to accompany a movie story. Now I see that this has at last become a reality; at least, this Hell's Gate really does smell - like an overused outhouse on a hot summer's day.

Any movie is a story; and a story must be coherent; this is not. Satyricon is not; it is a pastiche – but it took a genius like Fellini to get away with it. That Hollywood will spend millions on CG and explosions while at the same time keeping the writers' bill down in the thousands, and that begrudged, is well known. But for the rising indie, the rebel who seeks to displace the big guys, hopefully by artistic skill and quality, to produce a story based on a script jotted on the back of an old envelope is not the way to go. Your job is to tell a coherent story; do it with all of the ornamentation you can add, but never so much that its coherence is lost, or even threatened.

Scripts comprise actions and dialogue; there was plenty of action in this movie, some of it even meaningful, but of dialogue – well? Were we witnessing a new trend in movie-making, the all-ad-libbed attention addler? Could the 'talent' not remember their lines? Did they know what 'articulation' and 'enunciation' mean? Or could the handi- cams not pick up their voices? Not enough interest to do a few voice loops in post-prod? If Shakespeare had written a grunt for Hamlet to recite instead of 'To be or not to be' and the next 20 lines, the world of theatre would be a poorer place; yet this malodourous malevolence of a movie apparently seeks to promote the grunt as mankind's last word in oral articulation and verbal communication. The grunt, while having the merit of brevity, does lack specificity.

Another element required of a story is that its audience relates to it – they relate to the characters. Often audiences relate to the guy they see on the screen – the actor – instead of to the character; but that's Hollywood for you, either way those bozos make money. Indies don't have Cruises or Schwarzneggers in their budgets; but they can cast an actor into a suitable part and support that actor into dressing out and projecting the character, and its development, if they have the skill. Mr Beard, why didn't you do that?

With camera tripods so affordable, and good liquor so dear, how come the decision to use camerapersons apparently afflicted with the shakes and the staggers?

And what was the dreadfully delivered Oirish accent all about? Thousands of very talented Irish in the world (meself, for example), all with accents, many with acting skills, eager for a chance, and you have to offend an entire nation by putting this gratuitous foulness into your 'script'? Of course, since there is so little else in the script, perhaps the multi-talent-free 'writer', 'director' and (of course) his own 'leading man' felt obliged to put something in – anything! I suppose he called it 'color', or 'character' when he was begging dad-in-law for the backing.

I think the whole movie was best epitomised by the shoot-out scene in the bar and outside it – 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' While we may be amused at the great waste of gunpowder as against the minimal resulting carnage – how very opposed to Hollywood is this! – we are ultimately not engaged because we have no idea who these people are, or why they are doing this – and so we frankly don't care. Which is the single most telling aspect of this movie that you project, Mr Beard: we don't care, most likely because you didn't.

Yet it's not a total loss; what merit came through incites me to say that I hope you try again.

I lately watched this modern Western with a friend and as a big fan of the genre, I must admit that this flick is one of the worst Westerns I have ever watched and in general one of the worst movies I have seen in quite a while. The only reasons why this movie got two points are some gorgeous landscapes and the good choice of decorations and also costumes for the actors.

The rest is just awful apart of some beautiful actresses that though have only quite short roles. The movie lacks of a coherent story line and randomly follows a couple of poorly written side stories that are not even told until the end. The acting is quite bad and filled with stereotypes concerning the Indians or a strange Russian hunter where one might ask what he is doing in Texas after all. The characters have all no development or depth at all. The dialogues are the most awful thing and make this movie very hard to sit through. The characters simply talk a lot without saying anything intelligent.

The movie lacks of suspense and humour and also of action scenes. The film is composed of landscape scenes, endless dialogues and switches from one story line to the other. Sometimes, these switches happen so fast one quickly gets confused with the high number of secondary characters and the weird chronology of the movie while at other moments one stays half an hour with the same characters without anything going on at all. The few action passages are very poor and can be resumed to random shooting scenes where the actors feel very bored and wooden and die without big emotions at all.

There is nothing hellish or legendary about this flick and the note that this movie is based on true events is just a cheap way to attract some more viewers as most of this flick simply is pure fiction built up around a few nebulous facts. The short side story around the possible Abraham Lincoln murderer is the most laughable thing about this flick and it doesn't have anything to do at all with the rest of the movie. This part was only included to make American patriots watch this movie and they will be disappointed quite soon. One doesn't even get to know why the guy killed the president of the United States of America, we only get to see a weird barman played by some sort of cheap Johnny Depp copy getting drunk and feeling sick who then thinks he dies and reveals his killing secret only to wake up in perfect health the next morning and leave the city without any urge and problem after somebody has stolen his possessions. This bit seems to be quite random to you? Yes, it is and so is the entire rest of this big letdown. Just avoid this piece of trash at all costs and don't get fooled by the promising title or partially wrong advertisements.

I REALLY hate scripts that are about an area that the writer knows nothing about. The one that jumped right out at me was when they were going to cross the Brazos river in Granbury and they had to swim. I have a news flash, unless it was right after a heavy rain storm which by all the dust I highly doubt, you can probably walk across the Brazos without getting your ankles wet! Also, they rode horseback from Dallas to Granbury in one night, which is also HIGHLY unlikely since as the crow flies it has to be at least 70 miles. From downtown Fort Worth it is at least 45 miles.

The accents by the actors were so bad, and that goes for the Irish, southern, and the others that were unrecognizable.