Ghost Rock

When I saw that Gary Busey was in this movie, I had to see it. I knew it would be bad, but I did not know how bad. This movie was bad, and not in a funny way. Gary Busey plays the mayor of a little Western town, and his job is to maintain order while a group of Chinese railroad workers and locals fight for control. There was so much fighting in this movie that it was hard to keep track of the reasons. The fighting was also matrix style, and it was kung fu. Gary Busey was not the only horrible actor in this movie, everyone involved was equally nauseating. I had to turn the movie off after an hour. The worst part is that I had this movie in my home for almost a week.

First, let me say that I am a fan of westerns, including many of the more recent in the genre. Still, I found this movie to be an utter waste of time.

The action scenes in this movie are easily the worst that I have seen in a movie which was not a total spoof. This is made clear in the second scene of the movie as a man is "thrown out" of a building, which involves hopping a few times out a door into a small somersault. Action scenes throughout the movie have some of the least convincing fake punches, gun wounds, and deaths in cinematic history. Some of the kung fu scenes are a small step up, but the editing into and out of these scenes is awful.

The tone of the story is mostly serious, with random bits of comic relief thrown in, but it becomes difficult to sort these from the extremely shallow story and pathetic acting.

I am a true lover of westerns, including the "B" westerns of Hollywood's golden era, so I tend to be tolerant of diverse production values. However, this is truly a time-waster. Continuity is sporadic, transitions are sometimes clumsy, comedy breaks are mediocre to silly, and stunt work is often abysmal. Gary Busey is the highlight in this film, although he did nothing to elevate his status by playing in this movie. He is a talented and accomplished actor and would undoubtedly shine, in even the worst movie. (Perhaps he just had that chance.) Now, not every small movie is a time-waster. Some of them turn out to be real gems. This is not one of them.

Michael Worth stars as a gun-runner who goes up against the local mobster (Gary Busey) who wiped out Worth's friends and family years ago, however a mysterious blonde has returned and is killing of Busey's gang one by one, also on hand is Jeff Fahey who is fairly useless to the High Plains Drifter rip off storyline. When I think westerns I don't think of dynamic martial artistry combining with six-shooters. There is a problem of tone and due to this the movie never gels and we are left to flounder in the silliness of watching a hybrid of two genres that never mix that well. The best of these hybrids was Lone Wolf McQuade but the movie this reminds me was the Olvier Gruner starred dud The Fighter. Which also combined kickboxing with western antics, the western ripped off there was Shane, where as this one rips off High Plains Drifter, even down to the "twist" at the end. This is of course a very silly effort but Dustin Rikert is not much of an action director and for this the movie is fairly dull.

*1/2 out of 4-(Poor)

A "western" with people running around doing Shaolin kung fu. There's a "Chinese" character who looks as Chinese as my Aunt Sally, who has never seen a Chinese person in her life. All the bad guys are dummies, and even though they always have their guns aimed at the good guys at point blank range and could kill them at any time, never bothers to pull the trigger. This, despite the fact that the bad guy's head honcho (Gary Busey) has killed people randomly throughout the film, but for some reason always lets the hero go so he can come back for one of those final shoot-outs. The script by the star is nonsensical, even as camp. The martial arts is actually quite good, but in the background of a western, it's just...wrong. Also, did the female lead steal Sharon Stone's clothes from THE QUICK AND THE DEAD? Someone call the police.

4 out of 10