FILM REVIEW OF ''SIX BULLETS TO HELL" (2017)

The people who produced the half-baked horse opera “Six Bullets to Hell” (* OUT OF ****) craved the Spaghetti Westerns that stampeded across Techniscope screens in cinemas during the 1960s and the 1970s.  This routine shoot’em up about revenge musters a few memorable moments as a grief-stricken husband rides out to slaughter the dastards who raped and murdered his pregnant wife.  Actually, this twelve of December, straight-to-video release imitates the first part of Giulio Petroni’s “Death Rides a Horse” (1967), co-starring Lee Van Cleef and John Phillip Law, and the last half of Sergio Leone’s “For A Few Dollars More” with a town shootout.  Not only have the producers acquired cues from composer Ennio Morricone’s “The Big Gundown” (1966) soundtrack, but they have also staged their frontier fracas on the hallowed earth of Almeria, Spain, where Sergio Leone made his landmark Clint Eastwood “Dollars” trilogy.  Clearly, “Six Bullets to Hell” constituted a labor of love for co-scripters and co-directors Tanner Beard and Russell Quinn Cummings. As a long-time Spaghetti western enthusiast, I applaud their lofty ambitions.  Indeed, they had their hearts in the right place, but their heads were stuck somewhere else.  

 This scrappy simulation of a Spaghetti Western on a skeletal budget is more often embarrassing for its kitschy quality.  Characterization in “Six Bullets to Hell” is confined to the appearance and wardrobe of each person.  The most memorable is the chief villain who totes a Winchester repeating rifle in a leather saddle scabbard strapped across his back.  The dialogue is undistinguished, too. None of the cast look like they belong in a period piece.  Happily, the corny dubbing smooths out some performances.  One of the major shortcomings for avid Spaghetti western fans is the lackluster sound effects used for gunshots.  Tanner & Cummings should have replicated the cacophonous Spaghetti western gunshots instead of the bland sounds on hand.  Practically all sound in Spaghetti westerns was done during post-production, particularly the thudding hoofbeats of the horses and the mechanical sounds of revolvers as their hammers were either cocked or the cylinders twirled like roulette wheels.  Lenser Olivier Merckx loves to shoot into the sun for an artistic flare effect, but these starbursts soon become tedious.  He foregoes filters for exterior shots filmed within a room, so the outside light amounts to an impenetrable glare.

A gang of unsavory desperadoes shows up at a ramshackle ranch in the middle of nowhere.  A pregnant lady, Grace Rogers (Magda Rodriguez of “The Riddle”), has been left her alone without so much as a shotgun, while her husband has ridden off to town for supplies.  Bobby Durango (Tanner Beard) and his pistoleros rape and kill Grace for fun. Later, Durango strings up one of his own men, Nino (Nacho Diáz), who refused to participate in the rape.  Imagine the shock that Grace’s husband Billy Rogers (Crispian Belfrage of “Doc West”) experiences when he returns to the ranch and finds Nino swinging at the end of a noose.  Afterward, Billy discovers his murdered wife strewn lifelessly in bed.  No, the filmmakers shrink from showing the savagery that Grace must have endured at their hands.  Before they left the ranch, Durango blasted her in the belly without a qualm, and left her sprawled in a pool of blood.  Naturally, grief overwhelms Billy when he stares at his dead spouse.  He hauls Nino’s corpse back to town.  Sheriff Morris (Russell Quinn Cummings) takes Nino off his hands, and Billy finds himself the recipient of bounty on Nino.  Earlier in the action, the filmmakers indulged in a bit of foreshadowing.  Briefly, Sheriff Morris and his sidekick deputy had discussed Billy’s lethal marksmanship skills with a gun.  

Our hero digs a holstered Colt’s revolver out a hope chest where he had relegated it after he quit his job as a lawman and decided to settle down.  This moment evokes memories of the Spanish-lensed western sequel “Return of the Seven” (1966) when Chico pulled his trusty six-gun out of a chest.  Decked out in black, Billy hits the vengeance trail, while Durango’s unruly gang disintegrates. They object to the way that he splits their ill-gotten gains.  Bobby appropriates half of everything, and they get to divide the rest.  The best scene occurs when our grim hero confronts one of his wife’s rapists in a saloon and guns him down in cold blood.  Shortly before the rapist dies at Billy’s hand, he protests that he is not armed.  Neither was my wife replies our steely-eyed hero and then repeatedly fills him full of lead.  This is as about as close as Tanner & Cummings come to depicting the amoral violence of the Spaghetti Western.  Another beef that dyed-in-the-wood Spaghetti fans will have with this movie is the lazy way the gunshot-riddled extras expire.  They don’t hurl their hands high up and pirouette before crashing into a tangled heap.  Instead, they fall down without any flair.  

“Six Bullets to Hell” also pays tribute to the original “Magnificent Seven.”  The first time we see Durango and his dastards, they loot a church and find next to nothing in the poor box.  The priest informs them that the congregation has stashed the bulk of their savings in a nearby bank.  Nevertheless, the bad guys take the few pennies in the poor box, just as Calvera’s bandits bragged about in the opening scene of “The Magnificent Seven.”  Sadly, the primary actors don’t look rugged enough to convince us that they are capable of their heinous acts that they perpetrate.  Crispan Belfrage looks like a sad sack version of a hero.  In fact, nobody in this western can act worth a plug nickel.  Some of the cast don’t know how to handle firearms.  A bare-bones valentine to the genre, “Six Bullets to Hell” makes some of the worst Spaghetti westerns look like masterpieces.  Altogether, as gratifying an homage as it is to Spaghetti westerns, “Six Bullets to Hell” qualifies as lame from start to finish.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE HATEFUL EIGHT" (2015)

The world emerges as a hostile, inhospitable setting in writer & director Quentin Tarantino’s second western “The Hateful Eight” (**** OUT OF ****), and everybody but the innocent bystanders winds up getting what they deserve.  Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and Channing Tatum seem never at a loss for words in this consistently entertaining but abrasively self-indulgent horse opera.  Like a typical Tarantino tale, “The Hateful Eight” wallows in blood-splattered carnage, punctuated by gunfire, and intensified by politically incorrect subject matter laden with scatological, R-rated profanity.  Set in a sprawling mosaic of snow-swept Wyoming mountains, this suspenseful bounty hunters versus outlaws western  methodically unfolds like a claustrophobic but chatty Agatha Christie drawing-room murder-mystery.  Predictably, Tarantino shoots the works with both surprises and shocks that keep this static outing interesting as well as melodramatic.  A suspicious bounty hunter escorts a homicidal dame with a $10-thousand dollar reward on her head for a date with the gallows.  During his journey, the bounty hunter encounters various gunmen and takes refuge with them in a remote stagecoach relay station during a freezing blizzard.  The predominantly all-male cast is nothing short of exceptional, but this doesn’t eclipse Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance as a slimy villain.  Now, if you’re not an ardent connoisseur of all things Tarantino, you may find yourself exiting the premises before the film reaches its midpoint. 

Scruffy, loud-mouthed, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell of “Tombstone”) has chartered a private stagecoach to transport his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh of “Backdraft”), to the town of Red Rock.  He is taking Daisy in alive to watch her hang for her crimes.  Unlike most bounty hunters, Ruth prefers to show up with his prisoners alive rather than dead.  Along the trail, Ruth runs into another bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”), who is smoking his pipe perched atop a stack of three frozen corpses.  Major Warren gunned down these three guys for the collective $8-thousand dollar bounty on their heads.  Unlike Ruth, Warren takes no chances and shows up with his desperadoes dead rather than alive.  Major Warren explains that his horse fell dead during the trip across the mountains, and he inquires if Ruth will give him a lift.  Reluctantly, Ruth allows Warren to climb aboard.  Before Warren can enter the stagecoach, Ruth orders him to surrender his two six-shooters to the coachman, O.B Jackson (James Parks of “Machete”), for safekeeping.  Later, another man stranded on foot, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins of “Cowboys & Aliens”), who claims to be the sheriff of Red Rock flags them down.  When Ruth demands to see his badge, Mannix explains that he was riding to Red Rock when his horse stepped into a gopher hole and he had to shoot it.  Initially, Ruth refuses to believe Mannix. Mannix explains that Red Rock recently lost their sheriff and that he is replacing him.  Since he hasn’t gotten to Red Rock yet, he doesn’t have a badge.  Furthermore, Mannix argues that Warren and the coach driver will serve as witnesses to testify against Ruth if Mannix is found frozen dead in the snow because Ruth wouldn’t oblige him. Glumly, Ruth lets Mannix join them.  Before he lets Mannix aboard, Ruth strikes up an uneasy alliance with Warren.  Ruth lets Warren reclaim his revolvers and promises to protect him if Warren will watch over him, too.  An infamous Confederate marauder, Mannix is wary of Major Warren who is an ex-Union cavalryman with his own notorious reputation.  According to Mannix, Warren burned down a Confederate prison camp to escape from it.  During the conflagration, more than forty young Confederate recruits died.  CSA President Jefferson Davis put a bounty on Warren’s head and Federal authorities drummed him out of the cavalry. 

Basically, the three men aboard the stagecoach remain deeply suspicious about each other despite any deals they may have forged.  Eventually, the stagecoach arrives at a lonely relay station called Minnie Haberdashery where six horse stagecoach teams are changed while the passengers rest and refresh themselves.  Warren is surprised to learn that Minnie and her family not only have left the relay station in the hands of a Mexican, Bob (Demián Bichir of “Savages”), but also have gone to visit friends.  Meantime, Ruth ushers Daisy inside at gunpoint and interrogates the three guests about their identities and destinations.  He learns that an Englishman, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth of “Reservoir Dogs”), is a hangman in route to Red Rock.  The other man, a drover back from a cattle drive, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen of “Die Another Day”), is heading to see his mother on the far side of Red Rock.  Ruth disarms both men, dismantles their revolvers, and sends O.B. into the freezing storm to dump their firearms in the nearby outhouse.  The other guest, elderly Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern of “The Cowboys”), doesn’t own a gun.  Nevertheless, Ruth doesn’t trust any of them, and he keeps Daisy attached to a chain around his wrist.  Meantime, Warren doesn’t believe Mexican Bob’s story about Minnie, but he doesn’t have enough evidence to call him a liar.  Unquestionably, the scenes in the stagecoach station constitute the best part of this western.

 

Kurt Russell blusters through his role as John Ruth, giving a variation on the John Wayne performance that he gave for John Carpenter in “Big Trouble in Little China.”  He plays a character who is far friendlier than the Stuntman Mike villain he played in Tarantino’s “Death Proof” (1986). Samuel L. Jackson is at the top of his game as the controversial Major Warren.  He dresses like the Lee Van Cleef character Colonel Douglas Mortimer did in Sergio Leone’s second Clint Eastwood movie “For a Few Dollars More.”  Channing Tatum appears near the end as a French pistolero who keeps the bullet loops on his holstered pair of revolvers stuffed with lead.  The character that Jennifer Jason Leigh plays hasn’t a shred of decency, and John Ruth doesn’t treat her with diplomacy.  At one point, he smashes out her front teeth after she gets him riled. “The Hateful Eight” clocks in at 168 minutes.  Essentially, Tarantino takes his own sweet time setting up the situation and developing the characters.  He gives each of the eight a chance to showcase themselves once the blizzard confines everybody to the stagecoach station with nowhere else to go.  During the second half, we learn a lot about these characters.  Whether they are wounded or killed, you probably won’t shed a tear for any of them.  If you’re looking for role models, you won’t find them.  These guys and especially the girl are all dastards. Nevertheless, die-hard Tarantino fans will find it in their hearts to forgive him for the elongated running time, applaud his spontaneous, slam-bang violence, and chuckle at his ghoulish gallery of gruesome characters.  Indeed, Tarantino’s eighth feature film lives up to its title, and some parts of it are more hateful than other parts.  Compared with Tarantino’s previous seven epics, this gritty, gimlet-eyed western resembles “Reservoir Dogs” with its Spartan number of settings.  Major Warren’s story about General Smithers’ son sounds like a reversal of what happened to Marsellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction.” This scene is probably going to make some southern males cringe for its “Deliverance” subject matter. In fact, the director has said that not only he was influenced by Sergio Corbucci’s Spaghetti westerns, but also the cult science fiction horror movie “The Thing” that starred Kurt Russell.  Altogether “The Hateful Eight” qualifies as Tarantino’s best since “Jackie Brown.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST" (2014)

Seth MacFarlane’s half-baked horse opera “A Million Ways to Die in the West” (** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a saddle-sore saga.  This lowest common denominator sagebrush satire boasts low-brow bowel humor, highly offensive language, and gory death scenes.  Despite all these unsavory elements, this western spoof emerges as fair at best and routine at worst.  Sporadically funny jokes and gags cannot conceal the conventions and clichés.  The first problem is the trite Alex Sulkin, Wellesley Wild, and Seth MacFarlane screenplay.  Recently, I watched an Eddie Albert comedy “The Dude Goes West” (1947) that covered similar ground with greater success.  MacFarlane and his co-writers rant about the deplorable conditions governing life on the frontier in the 19^th century American west.  The hero and the heroine hate the west.  This revulsion of all things western neither distinguishes MacFarlane’s movie nor makes its humor any funnier.  The only place where “A Million Ways to Die” breaks ground is with its raunchy R-rated jokes.  Some of the jokes hit, but most miss. Some jokes are so vile they might gag the guys in the “Jackass” movies.  Indeed, MacFarlane gets away with a lot in this lame oater, especially during the opening “Gunsmoke” showdown.  The good jokes are really good.  One of the best turns out to be badly told but this serves to accentuate the humor.  The second problem is most of the dialogue sounds like stand-up, comic routines.  Some standup comedy routines are better than others.  The best gag concerns Old West photography.  The running joke is nobody smiles in a photograph in the 19^th century.  Nevertheless, the grinning photo attained the status as an urban legend.  Those who aren’t appalled by MacFarlane’s infantile as well as scatological sense of humor will no doubt want to roll in it like a dog in its own feces.  “A Million Ways to Die in the West” struggles to emulate “Blazing Saddles,” deliver dialogue like “Deadwood,” and show off like “Faces of Death.”

The setting of “A Million Ways to Die” is the town of Old Stump in the Arizona Territory in the year 1882.  Our pusillanimous sheep farming protagonist, Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane of “Ted”), sinks into a state of depression after his schoolmarm girlfriend, Louise (Amanda Seyfried), dumps him for a snotty lothario, Foy (Neal Patrick Harris of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”), who owns a mustache shop.  No, nice-guy Albert doesn’t sport a mustache.  Louise left Albert because she classified him as too cowardly.  During the opening Main Street showdown, Albert drops his six-gun in the dust rather than shoot it out with another gunman.  Later, Albert challenges Foy to a duel.  Meantime, a mysterious woman, Anna (Charlize Theron of “Monster”), shows Albert how to handle a hog-leg.  Anna, as it turns out, is the wife of notorious outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson of “Taken”) who eventually decides to shoot Albert for flirting with his wife.  Basically, boy loses girl, boy tries to get girl back, but takes up with a different girl describes the storyline.  An imbecilic subplot concerns the romance between a hard-working saloon prostitute, Ruth (Sarah Silverman of “Evolution”) and a timid male virgin shoemaker (Giovanni Ribisi of “The Mod Squad”) who has agreed not to have intercourse with her until their wedding night.  Albert and his friends emerge as likeable, sympathetic characters, while Foy, Clinch, and his henchmen are as repulsive as rattlers.

Although best known as the creator of the respective animated series “American Dad” and “Family Guy,” not to mention his previous blockbuster comedy “Ted” with Mark Wahlberg, MacFarlane must have been gambling that he could resurrect a moribund franchise with his impertinent humor.  Westerns have not performed well at the box office since the early 1990s, and even then the genre was riding on borrowed time.  After John Wayne died and Clint Eastwood got too old plains, westerns have never regained their former grandeur.  Disney’s “Lone Ranger” tanked last summer, and only AMC’s “Hell on Wheels” on television has survived with any success.  The Jeff Bridges “True Grit” remake and Quentin Tarantino’s slave saga “Django” are the sole examples of successes.  Nothing about MacFarlane’s approach to the genre justifies its use.  He looks out of place himself with his hopelessly clean-scrubbed, Shoney’s Big Boy looks.  Aside from his profanity, MacFarlane plays the same tenderfoot that Bob Hope, Eddie Albert, Gary Cooper, Don Knotts, or Tim Conway have done in earlier movies and television shows.  Neil Patrick Harris usually steals the show no matter what the material, but he makes only a minor impression with his Snidely Whiplash villain.  Unfortunate Amanda Seyfried has little more to do than bulge her beautiful eyes and swish an umbrella.  Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson wander through their roles.  Colorful cameos by the likes of Christopher Lloyd, Gilbert Gottfried, Ewan McGregor, Jamie Foxx, and Bill Maher prove more stimulating.  “A Million Ways to Die in the West” could have been a million times better.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE COMANCHEROS" (1961)

John Wayne plays 'Big' Jake Cutter, a seasoned Texas Rangers captain, searching for an army of desperadoes in "Casablanca" director Michael Curtiz's "The Comancheros" (**** OUT OF ****) who are selling rifles, ammunition, and whiskey to Indians that have turned the border into a battlefield. This top-notch frontier fracas co-starred Stuart Whitman and Ian Balin along with a veteran cast of supporting players, including Bruce Cabot, Jack Elam, Michael Ansara, Edgar Buchanan, Henry Daniell, Lee Marvin, Richard Devon, and Nehemiah Persoff. "The Comancheros" turned out to be Curtiz's final film, and the legendary Hungarian helmer, who had been celebrated for his malapropisms, was ill throughout most of the lensing. Nevertheless, Wayne made sure that he received sole directorial credit.If you look carefully, you'll spot at least one Curtiz shot that only he could have envisaged. When Wayne makes his entrance, his shadow is reflected off the wall before we see him walk into the shot. William H. Clothier's sprawling widescreen Cinemascope photography, "Angel and the Badman" scribe James Edward Grant's memorable dialogue, and "Ten Commandants" composer Elmer Bernstein's epic orchestral score all to bolster this exciting action-packed horse opera above the usual run-of-the-mill oater.

The action unfolds 1843 in Louisiana when Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman) guns down an opponent in a duel. Regret observes ruefully that had his opponent not moved, he would have only have winged him. Since the dead man was Judge Bouvier's son, one of the dueling referees assures Regret that he will swing from the gallows after he surrenders to the law. Regret clears out of Louisiana and boards a riverboat. A beautiful young woman, Pilar Graile (Ian Balin of "Charro"), pursues Regret. They dance and retire to her bedroom. “What passes between us tonight has nothing to do with love,” Pilar clarifies their status.  An incredulous Regret wonders, “You don’t believe there’s such a thing as love?”  Pilar cherishes no illusions about love.  “I believe this very night all over the world, men and women are saying to each other, “I love you,” when what theyreally mean is, “I desire you.”  The riverboat docks in Galveston, and Regret awakens to find himself handcuffed and under arrest. Captain Jake Cutter points out that the state of Louisiana wants to extradite Regret, and they embark on their on-again, off-again journey. They ride across a ranch where hostile Indians have massacred all the occupants. Cutter and Regret bury the family, and Cutter turns his back for a moment on Regret. The gentlemen who wears $300 dollar suit clobbers Cutter with a spade and then hightails it.

  
Cutter recovers, suffers derision when he shows up at the Rangers' Headquarters riding a mule. He learns Major Henry (Bruce Cabot of "King Kong") has an assignment for him. The Rangers have nabbed a gun runner recently released from Yuma Territorial Prison, McBain (Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams of "Santa Fe Trail'), who has a rendezvous with a member of the Comancheros in the town of Sweetwater. “You want me to take his place, take those guns to Sweetwater and meet the contact men,” Cutter figures out what Henry wants him to do.  Cutter goes undercover as McBain and encounters a sinister, uncouth gunman, Tully Crow (Lee Marvin of "Attack"), and transacts a deal for a six crates of repeating rifle. Crow appears as menacing as he acts. Scar tissue covers part of his skull where the Indians scalped him. Crow like doesn't Cutter.  Later in the evening, Crow has a falling out with Cutter because the former believes that the latter has cheated him at poker. One of the participants is Paul Regret, but Regret keeps his mouth shut about Cutter's real occupation. When Cutter tries to leave the table, Crow pulls his six-gun, and Cutter shoots him stone dead. No sooner has Cutter gunned down Crow than he re-arrests Regret.

On the way to headquarters, Cutter runs into Major Henry and the Rangers at the Schofield grain ranch of his good friend, Pa (Bob Steele of "The Big Sleep"), who is preparing to move his family into town until the Indians abandon the warpath. Cutter has Regret cuffed to a blacksmith's anvil. After Major Henry and his platoon of Rangers ride out, the Indians attack. During the battle, Regret catches a horse and rides away. Texas Rangers' newbie Tobe (Patrick Wayne of "The Searchers") points out to Jake that his prisoner has gotten away again, but both men react with surprise when Regret returns with Major Henry and the Texas Rangers. After saving the Schofields from rampaging Indians, Cutter and Major Henry are reluctant it to expedite the well-dressed young gentleman to Louisiana lawmen. Instead, Cutter and Henry persuade Circuit Court Judge Thaddeus Jackson Breen (Edgar Buchanan of "Texas") to sign and swear to a statement that Regret is a Texas Ranger and cannot be arrested. Jake and Regret set out to find the men who supply the guns to a secret society of smugglers. Not long after they venture off into the arid, mountain-ribbed wilderness does a band of Indians Chief Iron Shirt (George J. Lewis of "Saskatchewan") over take them and escort them to the hidden camp of the gunrunners. Graile (Nehemiah Persoff of "The Badlanders") has Cutter and Regret tied up and left to bake in the blistering sun when her headstrong daughter demands that Cutter and hebe released. Secretly, Pilar knows about Cutter being a Texas Ranger, but she doesn't confide this privileged information to anybody. Initially, Graile wants to hang Cutter and Regret because anybody who enters their 'secret society must die before they can leave. Pilar intervenes on behalf of the good guys and warns her father that his evil ways aren't going to last much longer.

In the last ten minutes of "The Comancheros," when everything looks bleak for our heroes, Major Henry and his troop of Texas Rangers thunder to the rescue and scatter the few remaining Indians. "The Comancheros" ranks as one of John Wayne's best westerns with an inspired Elmer Bernstein score that captures the outdoors majesty of the mountainous scenery. Wayne's running gag where he refers to Regret as 'Mon-soor' is hilarious. There is more than enough gunplay for dyed-in-the-leather western fans. Action director Cliff Lyons stages several vast battles between men on horseback. "The Comancheros" qualifies as one of Wayne's best straightforward western as well as a must-see John Wayne aficionados.