Le Cavalier de l'Aube

I'm a big fan of westerns and have been since my childhood in the 60's. This is perhaps the worst western i've ever seen. It had such promise, Christian Slater and Donald Southerland are two actors I've always enjoyed. I sought this film out because they're in it, what a walloping disappointment! Stupid plot, flat acting, ridiculous inconsistencies, modern dialogue far removed from period correct, empty characters, the list of bad qualities goes on. The entire production is really lousy. There are giant holes in the story line that get filled with the kind of convenience elements a high school level writer would utilize. i tried really hard to care about any of the characters but they were so thin that there wasn't anything to care about. Phoned in performances from Southerland and Slater were a huge disappointment.

Using most of the character names as was used in the original Tom Tyler film (Monogram) and the remakes starring John Wayne (Lone Star-Monogram) and Bob Baker (Uinversal), it would appear that such an outright theft should have also been noted when the writing credits appear on this film...but try as I may I fail to find one line on any frame of this film that mention this film was base on an original story and screenplay by Wellyn Totman, and also on subsequent screenplays by Robert N. Bradbury and George Waggner. Evidently, the use of previously-written copyrighted material, without crediting any of the original story or screenplay writers is no problem in Canada. A simple based-upon-by nod would have been honest, at least.

"When my father died he was trying to tell me something, Dos Equis." When fugitive John Mason's (Slater) father is killed by a group of masked bandits he decides to hunt them down and get his revenge. Things get complicated when he realizes that the bandits are closer to home then he thought. I have said a few times now that I don't know what happened to the western genre. After "Dances With Wolves", "Tombstone" and "Open Range" the genre seemed to fall off drastically and is now limited to very low budget cheesy made-for-TV movie type movies. I was looking forward to this one mainly because of the cast. I thought finally a descent western that I will like. While this is a great many times better then 90% if the recent contributions, this felt the same as the rest. This could have easily been another made-for-TV movie if not for the cast. Nothing really original and this is not the return of the great westerns I was hoping for but this is easily one of the better ones in recent memory. Which isn't really saying that much I know. Overall, worth watching and entertaining but it is a little slow and still a B-rate western. I give it a B-.

What can you say, this movie is what it is. I think the movie's budget went to paying all of the top 4 actors their salary. I must say Jill Hennessy still looks great and she was the best thing about this movie. What's up with the town they live in though? There's only like 10 people that live in this town. They couldn't hire 20 more extras? Gee whiz lol. I mean, Mason couldn't figure out out of the 10 people that lived in the town who the bad guy/guys were from the beginning? Again, I think the budget went to the salaries of the actors.

I loved Christian Slater's early work with True Romance, and Pump up the Volume, but he hasn't been able to play adult roles very well. He never was able to make that transition convincingly. If you want a good laugh though, check this film out.

"Dawn Rider" is a remake of a John Wayne "B" western of the 1930s. The original version ran only about fifty-three minutes, while this remake runs an additional forty minutes - which happens to be one of the big problems. There isn't enough story here to justify a ninety-three minute running time, so frequently the movie runs at a VERY slow speed. But there are other problems with the movie. The movie is also quite dull, and while there are several action sequences, they are very unexciting. While Christian Slater has given some fine performances in the past, he's hopeless here, the last person you would consider being a hardened gunfighter despite not shaving for several days. Donald Sutherland only appears in five brief scenes, indicating he was only hired for a few days so that the movie would qualify for Canadian content rules. The production values are okay, and there are a few well-photographed sequences, but that's not enough to make the movie appealing to even western addicts like myself.