Morto per un dollaro

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.

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.

Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz, and Rachel Brosnahan- by looking at the top billing of this film and the name of the director, it's not wrong to expect a decent film. But this movie fails at almost every aspect, from the cookie-cutter revisionist western storyline to bad editing, it's atrocious, maybe only apart from the acting. There are so many unnecessary scenes that even someone who doesn't know the ABC of film editing would agree to the fact that there are so many needless scenes. And also, this film feels like it's overrun by at least 20 mins, good editing would've kept the runtime under 90 mins, just like most of Budd Boetticher's famous westerns, whom this film is dedicated to.

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.

In old-school-style 1890's-based Western "Dead For A Dollar" Christoph Waltz & Warren Burke head to Mexico after Brandon Scott who's abducted (or ran off with) Rachel Brosnahan (excellent), wife of sleazy tycoon Hamish Linklater. They all converge (with Waltz's nemesis Willem Defoe) in a small dust-bowl town in the territory of crime-lord Benjamin Bratt & his gang (inc Luis Chávez) where shoot-out show-downs beckon. Stylishly shot in sepia tones by iconic veteran action writer / director Walter Hill (his first film in six yrs (and only second in ten)) it's simple & straight but decent fare, especially for those who don't necessarily need their Westerns to be 'modernized'.