The Last Rites of Ransom Pride

"The body of Ransom Pride belongs to me."

It didn't take me very long to realize that I wasn't going to enjoy The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. Ten minutes, at most. The whole vibe of the movie just turns me off. I like Lizzy Caplan, but putting one appealing actress in the middle of a disaster doesn't do much good. I disliked the way it was filmed, the dialogue, and the absurd, meandering, nonsensical narrative that served as the story.

Basically, Ransom Pride (the man) is a recently dead acquaintance of Juliette Flower (Caplan), and she made a promise to retrieve his body and bury it near his mother. In order to get his body, she has to deliver Ransom's still living younger brother to some seedy folks. Lots of people hate her, lots of people want her dead, and lots of people try to stop her. That's the story. There are lots of unlikeable characters that were utterly ridiculous in their seriousness, the frequent action scenes are terrible, and the entire movie makes little sense. Sounds like a real winner, right?

It's rare for me to truly hate a movie, but The Last Rites of Ransom Pride reached that dubious achievement. This is probably in the bottom two or three movies that I've seen this entire year. The only good news is that I (hopefully) don't have to ever watch it again.

I love the western genre enough that often I can accept a lesser entry of the genre despite its shortcomings. However, in the case of "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride", there are far more shortcomings than good elements. Actually, I can't recall any good elements at all! Though higher budgeted than most other Canadian films, it seems that they blew most of the money on rounding up that cast, since the visual look of the movie is horrible. The movie looks really cheap, due to a combination of threadbare production values and the always unwise decision to wash out any vibrant colors. But what is worse is the direction and the script. The story plays out in a very muddled way, so that despite the core story (sort of) making sense, there are details that are so badly explained (if explained at all) that you'll be scratching your head. And despite a running length of only 82 minutes, the movie plods on at a really slow pace, mainly due to there not being a heck of a lot of plot. Though there are a lot of annoying arty and self conscious moments It's evident that the filmmakers were trying for something different, but ironically they almost certainly would have made a better movie had they tried to be more conventional.

So you want to make a western, but not just a western. Nooooo. This is gonna be a Work of art too. So we add some weird color scheme and a lot of fixed camera settings on plants and desolate landscapes. Some strange music on top and let the plot unfurl really slooow. Now this takes the western up to art level, right? WRONG!! This is the recipe for a bad movie. Same thing happened for the french adaption of the comic Blueberry. What you get is a pretentious nothing. There have been several westerns deserving the art stamp. (The Searchers, The good bad & ugly, The unforgiven, to name a few), but these always worked within the boundaries of how a western should be, namely entertaining. This one definitely doesn't fit the bill.

It felt like a guilty pleasure watching the undeniably charismatic lead shoot her sultry and sexy way through assorted scuzzy reprobates, in this stylised take on the Western genre. The story involves an entertaining romp along the Mexican American border just after the turn of the last Century, in which early forms of mechanised transport duel with the traditional horsebacked cowboy depiction, and help to capture a changing age. The characters we are introduced to along the way (such as the dwarf/dying Siamese combo) help add to the slightly exotic, almost burlesque feel of the film. There is nothing particularly original here, and it felt like a definite case of 'style over substance'; I thought the final product was slightly let down by some hard-to-hear dialogue, and I couldn't decide if the jarring 'electric shock' flashbacks (or forwards) were too fast for me to keep up with, or just unnecessary. The casting department appeared to have raided the strange world of professional David Beckham lookalikes to fill the supporting role, and his transition from obedient daddy's boy to moody, seasoned side-kick shooter was too sudden and implausible....but then these are minor gripes about a film that doesn't profess much of a basis in historical reality, and is all the better for it. 7/10

The Last Rites Of Ransom Pride is definitely one weird western where the central character takes a step down from Sharon Stone in terms of social standing. Her boyfriend is the title character played at the beginning and in flashbacks by Scott Speedman and he's gunned down by someone he did not suspect at the beginning. But she promises him as the life oozes out of him on the town street to get his body back across the border for burial.

Speedman comes from a large clan named Pride. Speedman's dad is Reverend Dwight Yoakum who wears the title loosely and his uncle is Kris Kristofferson. They're not the greatest specimens of humanity ever, but they resent their son taking up with a prostitute. And one that shoot and fight like Lizzy Caplan. At least Sharon Stone in The Quick And The Dead was a good girl in an infinitely better film.

Not only do they hold Speedman against Caplan, but now she's involved with another Pride played by Jon Foster. And all the poor girl wants to do is the right thing by her dead boyfriend.

The Last Rites Of Ransom Pride is one terrible waste of good actors and good country singers.