A Gunfighter's Pledge

The story is OK, the acting is reasonable.

But the camerawork is AWFUL. Several close ups of the characters, especially the baddy, are way OUT OF FOCUS.

How these scenes ever made it past the cutting floor is beyond me. I've never seen such bad camera work, and for me it ruins the whole movie. Literally, bad optics!

A tired, poorly written script puts this to bed and helps you nod off. I'm guessing the producers weren't worried about trying to make a profit from a cinema release. The best part is when it ends. Couldn't come soon enough.

In A GUNFIGHTER'S PLEDGE, Luke Perry plays a lawman whose wife and son are murdered by a criminal he has twice incarcerated. Following the killer's trail into Mexico, Perry inadvertently kills an innocent man and takes the man's body home to a ranch where the dead man's sister and son live. Perry stays to help, and crosses paths with a mustache-twirling villain right out of DUDLEY DO-RIGHT, played by a sneering Thomas Howell in a big black hat and attire. Howell of course wants the dead man's ranch and will stop at nothing to get it, including hiring the gunslinger Perry has been seeking. The ending contains a twist. Perry is convincing as a haunted, tired lawman, although Howell is a little too Snidely Whiplash for my taste. Beautifully shot and staged in Simi Valley, Calif.

In playing Matt Austin in A Gunfighter's Pledge Luke Perry channeled both Alan Ladd as Shane and John Wayne as Cole Thornton in El Dorado as he plays a former sheriff who's both on a mission to get the guys who killed his family and paying a debt to a family whose provider he accidentally killed.

Luke's long outgrown the sideburns he made famous as Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 90210, in fact he's now got a three days growth of beard on him. Like Wayne in El Dorado where he kills the youngest son of a family being threatened by a cattle baron and whom he becomes the protector of, Perry in killing one of the two men kills the brother of a widow whose ranch rich landowner C. Thomas Howell wants because it's the source of water for the valley.

Howell himself has outgrown his brat pack days and makes a fine villain. Francesco Quinn, son of Anthony Quinn is a nasty crooked sheriff doing Howell's bidding. Also note Jaclyn DeSantis as the widowed sister of the man Perry kills and who he becomes the protector of.

One really glaring error in the film. I believe the original intent was to have a sadder ending, but a happier one was shot and tacked on at the last minute. I won't explain any further, but if you see the film, you'll know exactly what I mean.

A Gunfighter's Pledge is a good western, the kind we sadly don't see on the big screen any more.

I picked this up on DVD and it felt like a TV movie, and hey ho, it was, no surprise there. But I brought it on the strenght of the lead actors, Luke Perry and Thomas C Howell both of whom are very under rated (Perry especially) It's a familiar yarn really. Sheriff (Perry) is in pursuit of the man who killed his family (Kim Coates almost sleep walking through the role) and Howell is the greedy land baron who wants it all. It feels a bit like an episode of the A-Team, but in the Wild West except that people do get shot.

The film has some strenghts, the acting all round is decent enough, and the photography and sets all blend well, but the dialogue is just so ordinary and the score swamps the film, with music almost all the way through and rather than uplifting the scenes makes them all the more banal. Shame really.