A Tale of Two Guns

Poor make-up, poor sound quality, poor Foley artistry. The sound effects were inconsistent, the make up was like cheap Halloween make-up, and the sound was all over the place. I've seen worse, but it's been a while. I'm guessing the budget was really low or poorly spent.

I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2022 Western movie "A Tale of Two Guns" from writer and director Justin Lee here in 2022. And seeing that there were indeed a handful of good actors on the cast list, of course I sat down to watch it.

However, it was obvious pretty early on in the movie that this was not really a top notch production. How so? Well, from the very first gun fight, which actually starts off the movie, you have a feeling of it being an amateurish production actually, especially in terms of cinematography and the sounds. I've never sat through a movie with guns of any kind where the gunshots sounded so pathetic as they did in "A Tale of Two Guns".

The storyline in "A Tale of Two Guns" was actually fair enough. It wasn't the most riveting and compelling of storylines, but it was sufficient enough for a single viewing.

The movie does have a good cast ensemble, with the likes of Tom Berenger, Casper Van Dien, Ed Morrone, Judd Nelson, Jeff Fahey, Griff Furst, Jake Busey and Danny Trejo among those listed. However, most of these were just in the movie for a moment or two. And the audience are treated to Casper Van Dien and Ed Morrone for the majority of the movie.

I don't understand why they opted to show the gunfight scenes in slow motion. It didn't really add any excitement to the scenes. If anything, it just served as a nuissance, especially when laced with those god awful pathetic sounds for the guns.

All in all, "A Tale of Two Guns" was watchable for a single viewing, and that was about it. This was by no means a milestone in the Western genre. Nor is it a movie that brought anything new to the genre.

My rating of writer and director Justin Lee's 2022 Western "A Tale of Two Guns" lands on a four out of ten stars.

B+ movie, I didn't find the audio that annoying as other reviewers did.. What I did find was an enjoyable script and decent acting. A good hunt them down movie that took it's sweet time between action scene, but I didn't mind because the dialog was just so refreshing to listen to. Good simple folks, Bad guys with friends that you would play poker with.

Was the costume/wardrobe the greatest, no, but not horrible by any stretch of the imagination... Was the scenery spectacular...no...in fact not bad actually, yeah some of the buildings looked a little too new, but all in all, not bad.

Just a Western with a different slant than most today's movies take, and it made for an enjoyable view. If not for a few curse words and graphic blood scenes, this could be mistaken for a somewhat family friendly movie, since today's movies curse every other word. 8/10 (High rating for me).

Didn't go into this movie with any expectations as I was just planning on passing a couple of hours.

Unfortunately it was a poorly made, poorly acted, poorly written effort.

A lot of hammy acting and long winded monologues at key moments. The first gunfight looked like something you'd see in a school play and things didn't get any better after that.

Ed Morrone plays Artemis Hollinger, an uncorruptible and determined law enforcer hired by the legendary Marshall Terrance McTeague (Tom Berenger) to chase the cold-blood killer Abel Cruz (Casper Van Dien) in a classic "good vs. Evil" manhunt.

The mediocre sound quality of the film, the poor acting of some secondary characters, the discrepancies in timing between a bullet impact and the physical reaction of the bodies being shot at (which are in fact highlighted by slow-mo takes) are all strong reminders that this is a low budget movie.

But, if we manage to put that aside, we´re left with a nice story which reminds us that the world doesn´t always fall into the clear-cut, black-and-white model that we´d want it to fit most of the time for the sake of our peace of mind.

Chivalry, honour and ethics strugle to find a share at a place and time where those qualities maybe were rather unusual.

Despite the feeble general production of the movie, director and writer Justin Lee succesfully achieves the task of delivering a story that is worth to be told.

BTW, there is a cute redeeming post-credit scene that somehow enhances the plot twist that the whole movie ends up revolving around. Make sure you don´t miss it.