Having recently gone back and enjoyed several Walter Hill films (Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, Extreme Prejudice), I was looking forward to this late effort by a solid director. The trailer put me off at once: It looked cheap, and the selection of clips could almost be read as a parody. Having watched the film, I can say that it is not nearly as bad as the trailer suggests, but it is still an uneven and puzzling effort. First, as to the cheap look. The sets and much of the cinematography put me in mind of a 70s TV show. The lighting looks harsh and all wrong. Is it the film stock, or the digital settings? I don't know, but this film is very hard on the eyes. There is a monotony to the color palette (I realize we're in the West and everything is brown, but still). As for the acting, much of it is played in a monotone that (like the snippets of faux-Morricone music) is meant to suggest, I guess, the steely-eyed characters of a Leone film. But the effect falls flat. There is a bull-whip fight that serves no purpose other than to show a bull-whip fight. The plot is simple enough at first but then spins off in increasingly ridiculous directions, until at the end we are left wondering why El Hefe is even bothering to ride into town. Dafoe is never bad and puts in a good effort here; Brosnahan also makes the best of a bad situation. But overall a real head-scratcher.
Review of Dead for a Dollar
