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 ''KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD" (2017)

Hollywood must constantly reinvent old yarns to make them relevant for contemporary audiences.  “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” director Guy Ritchie embraces this strategy with his spectacular, $175-million, sword & sorcery saga “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” (**** OUT OF ****), starring “Sons of Anarchy’s” Charlie Hunnam as the title character.  Unmistakably inspired by the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Ritchie and scenarists Joby Harold of “Awake” and Lionel Wigram of “Sherlock Holmes,” adapting a story by Harold and “Jack the Giant Slayer’s” David Dobkin, have appropriated the venerable legend and accentuated its far-fetched fantasy elements.  If you’re expecting either a rehash of John Boorman’s splendid “Excalibur” (1981) or Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” (2004) with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, the provocative departures Ritchie and company have taken may alienate you.  Anybody expecting Ritchie’s “King Arthur” will stick to the legends may feel disgruntled by this two-hour plus, PG-13 swashbuckler.  Since its release, “King Arthur” has proven not what most audiences either sought or expected, and the Warner Brothers release has been branded a disaster considering its miserable $15-million opening.  Nevertheless, “King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword” qualifies as a terrific tale with stupendous CGI and ranks as the best version of the myth to grace screens since “Excalibur.” Mind you, “King Arthur” concerns itself more with the eponymous hero’s revenge against his repellent uncle than a romantic escapade like the Sean Connery & Richard Gere version “First Knight” (1995) where the two fought over Guinevere.  At the same time, “King Arthur” utilizes the familiar tropes of most Arthurian epics, but deploys them in ways both unusual and refreshing.

 

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” opens with a prologue which states that mage (magicians) and man no longer live in harmony.  The wicked warlock Mordred (Rob Knighton of “All Things to Men”) storms Uther Pendragon’s (Eric Bana of “Hulk”) kingdom with three gargantuan pachyderms—bigger than any you’ve seen--to destroy it.  These pachyderms have wrecking balls attached to their trunks, and they shatter the stone masonry as if it were made from papier mâché.  These rampaging beasts smash Camelot’s walls until Uther clambers aboard Mordred’s elephant and apparently decapitates the malevolent mage. Temporarily, order appears restored, until Uther’s deceitful brother, Vortigern (Jude Law of “Gattaca”), forfeits his wife Elsa (Katie McGrath) to three evil sea-witches equipped with the tentacles of an octopus.  He sacrifices Elsa so he can conjure up the Demon Knight to kill not only Uther, but also his wife in a larger-than-life clash.  The Demon Knight resembles those armor-clad behemoths that artist Frank Frazetta once created for the classic Molly Hatchet album covers in the 1970s.  Uther wields Excalibur against the enormous Demon Knight, but this monstrous fiend overwhelms him.  Before he dies, Uther orders young Arthur to flee.  Afterward, Uther hurls Excalibur aloft so that the sword turns somersaults in the air.  As he falls to his knees, Uther turns into a stone, and Excalibur impales itself to the hilt between Uther’s shoulder blades.  Vortigern sloughs off the Demon Knight form he took on in the fight and watches as his elder brother—now a huge rock--plunges into the bay with Excalibur sticking out of the rock.  Meantime, Uther’s infant son Arthur is swept down river in a boat like the infant Moses and compassionate prostitutes take him in and raise the lad as if he belonged to them. 

 

At this point, Vortigern has practiced enough black magic to make himself invincible until he learns that Excalibur has reappeared.  One day, the waters of the bay where Uther vanished with the sword in his back recede. Vortigern assembles young Englishman by the hundreds and ships them to the bay to see who can extract the sword from the stone.  Eventually, Vortigern’s dastardly henchmen capture Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) and he finds himself in front of Excalibur with no hope of pulling it out. Incredibly, Arthur draws the sword from the stone, but the sword delivers such a jolt to his system that our legendary hero drops it and collapses into an unconscious heap.  Later, Vortigern converses privately with Arthur, and Arthur assures him he has no wish to wear a crown.  Nevertheless, Vortigern plans to execute him in public.  Happily, a miracle appears in the form of an anonymous Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey of “Julliette”) dispatched by Merlin.  She visits one of Uther’s former knights, Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou of “Amistad”), and explains that his men and he must intervene before Vortigern can behead Arthur.  The next time we see Arthur, he is kneeling at an altar awaiting the executioner’s pleasure.  The Mage conjures up supernatural elements that paralyze Vortigern, sends his knights scrambling to save him, while Bedivere’s men rescue Arthur.  Afterward, “King Arthur” depicts our hero’s reluctance not only to take up Excalibur, but also to wield it to avenge the cold-blooded murder of his mother and father.

 

Charlie Hunnam makes a charismatic Arthur.  Indeed, compared with previous Arthurs, Hunnam could be hailed as ‘the man who didn’t want to be king,’ such is his reluctance to brandish Excalibur and solidify England against its adversaries both within and without the kingdom.  Director Guy Ritchie surrounds Hunnam with a thoroughly convincing cast, among them “Game of Thrones’” own Aidan Gillen.  If you’ve seen either of Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” thrillers, you will savor his snappy editing style and the amusing way that he condenses expository dialogue sequences.  At one point, the Mage sends our hero into the Dark Lands to learn about his past.  Indeed, Arthur’s past haunts him.  Eventually, he musters enough nerve from the experience to confront his treacherous uncle.  As the diabolical Vortigern, Jude Law indulges himself with an evil gleam in his eye, and his ominous henchmen in black armor are just as unsavory.  Despite its two-hour plus running time, “King Arthur” maintains its momentum, and Ritchie orchestrates some truly impressive battle sequences with computer generated imagery that enhances the larger-than-life spectacle. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" (2016)

“Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua’s bloodless, bullet-riddled remake of the classic western “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) lacks both its prestigious predecessor’s ultra-cool pugnacity under fire and its complex character development.  Nevertheless, while it doesn’t eclipse the first-class Yul Brynner & Steve McQueen shoot’em up, neither does the new “Seven” embarrass itself as some remakes such as “Ben-Hur.”  Loaded for bear, with a triple-digit body count, and rawhide performances by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, and Ethan Hawke, Fuqua’s “Magnificent Seven” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an entertaining, above-average, horse opera.  Shunning a scene-for-scene rehash of the original, “True Detective” scenarist Nic Pizzolatto and “Expendables 2” scribe Richard Wenk have shifted the setting from Mexico to America, as well as created fresh characters in no way related to anybody else in the three earlier “Magnificent Seven” sequels.  Interestingly, in changing the physical setting, Fuqua’s film resembles the short-lived CBS-TV series “The Magnificent Seven” (1998-2000) where the seven defended a frontier town against outsiders. Similarly, in both the television show and Fuqua’s version, a woman is responsible for recruiting the seven.  For the record, director John Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven” was itself a remake of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s landmark film. If retooling a samurai saga as a sagebrusher sounds bizarre, consider this: Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking Spaghetti western “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964) with Clint Eastwood was a remake of another Kurosawa samurai slash’em-up “Yojimbo” (1961) again with Toshirô Mifune.  Furthermore, later in 1964, American director Martin Ritt adapted yet another Kurosawa yarn “Rashomon” (1950) into the Paul Newman & William Shatner western “The Outrage.” Incidentally, science fiction aficionados should know that George Lucas has said that Kurosawa’s film “The Hidden Fortress” (1958), served as inspiration for his own historic “Star Wars” franchise. 

The original “Magnificent Seven” took place in Mexico.  Seven mercenaries who were down on their luck accepted a gold eagle--$20--for six weeks to safeguard a destitute farming village from the depredations of marauding banditos.  Calvera and his bandits would strike during harvest, but leave the farmers with adequate food to survive until they returned to plunder anew.  The “Magnificent Seven” reboot relocates the action to a traditional American western town.  Malignant capitalist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard of “Black Mass”) plans to buy up all the property in the town of Rose Creek to mine gold.  As the story unfolds, Bogue visits the townspeople at their church where they have assembled to settle this intolerable predicament.  The mustache-twirling Bogue offers them $20 each for their land parcels.  Furthermore, he stipulates that they have three weeks either to accommodate him or suffer the dire consequences.  Were this miserly offer not insulting enough for the settlers, Bogue draws first blood and shoots some of them in cold blood.  Bogue’s Native American sidekick derives special relish from burying his hatchet in the back of a fleeing woman.  Bogue blasts one dissenter, Matthew Cullen (Matt Bomer of “The Nice Guys”), at point blank range without a qualm. After grieving over her husband, Emma Cullen (Jennifer Lawrence lookalike Hayley Bennett of “Hardcore Henry”) approaches bounty hunter Sam Chisolm and implores him to help her fellow townspeople thwart Bogue’s ambitions. “Sir,” she addresses Sam. “I have a proposition. We're decent people being driven from our homes. Slaughtered in cold blood.” Decked out head to toe in black on a black horse, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington of “Unstoppable”) queries Emma: “So you seek revenge?” The widow replies,” I seek righteousness. But I'll take revenge.”

Sam recruits a nimble cardsharp, Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt of “Guardians of the Galaxy”), who cannot seem to avoid trouble or its consequences.  Clearly, Pratt’s character is forged in the mold of Steve McQueen’s character. These two spout a similar story about a hombre who jumped off a hotel roof. As the gent plunged past each window, spectators heard him say: “So far, so good.”  Fuqua gets more mileage out of this story than the John Sturges film imagined.  Fuqua appropriates one of original villain’s best lines for Bogue, who philosophically ponders the fate of the townspeople. “If God had not wanted them sheared, he would have not made them sheep.”  This seven amounts to a rugged multicultural outfit: an Asian gunslinger Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee of “Terminator Genisys”) wields knife with deadly grace; a lethal Comanche archer (newcomer Martin Sensmeier) never misses; a flinty Hispanic pistolero Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo of “Term Life”) displays enviable marksmanship skills, a Grizzly Adams mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio of “Full Metal Jacket”) likes to work in close with a hatchet, and a former Confederate sniper Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke of “The Purge”) struggles to conceal the nerve that he has lost.   Robicheaux combines the characters of Lee and Harry Luck from the original film, while Billy Rocks is the James Coburn character.       

Some abhor remakes more than sequels.  I saw “The Magnificent Seven” during its initial theatrical release in 1960, and I’ve seen it so many times since I can recite its many quotable lines, savor the slap and draw six-gun scene, and hum the evocative Elmer Bernstein title theme.  Happily, as the end credits roll, Fuqua cues Bernstein’s two-time Oscar nominated orchestral score.  Leathery tough “Magnificent Seven” fanatics will applaud this homage.  Hollywood had been pondering a remake of the Sturges’ western for almost decade.  Initially, the thought of such a remake filled me with dread.  Anybody who suffered through the abysmal remake of “Ben-Hur” (2016) knows the kind of blasphemy that can occur when a remake goes sideways.  The Charlton Heston version of “Ben-Hur” has withstood the ravages of time and nothing Hollywood can conjure up will surpass it. Fortunately, while it doesn’t contain as much clever, incisive dialogue as its predecessor, “The Magnificent Seven” remake isn’t the disaster I feared.  Indeed, Fuqua’s ensemble shootout ranks as one of the best westerns since the Coen Brothers’ “True Grit.”  Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke stand out in a gifted cast. Peter Sarsgaard scores as a repulsive villain, but he doesn’t boast the cutthroat humor that the original “Magnificent Seven” villain Calvera (played by Eli Wallach) had.  Nonetheless, what Sarsgaard’s villain lacks in dimension, he compensates for with murder.  Altogether, despite some idiotic comic relief, the remake of “The Magnificent Seven” is worth saddling up to see.

FILM REVIEW OF ''TUMBLEWEED" (1953)

Audie Murphy finds himself in desperate trouble in “Land Raiders” director Nathan Juran’s exciting western “Tumbleweed” (*** OUT OF ****) when he tangles with hostile Yaqui Indians and treacherous whites.  What sets this Murphy horse opera apart is “Red Mountain” scenarist John Meredyth Lucas’ audacious screenplay based on Kenneth Perkins’ novel "Three Were Renegades."  Murphy gets himself mired deeper into danger to clear himself as this adventurous 79-minute oater winds down to its finale.  Initially, our resourceful hero displays benevolence when he comes to the aid of a wounded Yaqui brave in the desert.  Apparently, an unknown white gunman shot the Yaqui in the left shoulder and left him for dead.  Jim Harvey (Audie Murphy of “The Kid from Texas”) digs a bullet out of Tigre (Eugene Iglesias of “Apache Rifles”), the son of Yaqui chieftain Aguila (Ralph Moody of “Reprisal!”) who abhors whites with a passion.  At one point, a hateful Tigre tries to stab Harvey, but our hero manages to deflect this futile effort.  After saving Tigre’s life, our hero accepts a job as a guide for a group of pioneers.  At first, when he meets Harvey in the town of Mile High, wagon train master Seth Blanden (Ross Elliot of “Never So Few”) thinks Harvey is too young to provide them with adequate guidance.  Attractive Laura Saunders (Lori Nelson) is the sister-in-law traveling with relatives.  She likes the sight of Harvey, but Seth’s wife Sarah (Madge Meredith of “Trail Street”) disapproves of a drifter like Harvey.  Sarah wanted Laura to marry Seth’s brother Lam (Russell Johnson of “Gilligan’s Island”) because he is a stable individual. Harvey does a good job as a guide until the Yaquis box them in and try to burn their wagons.  Harvey sends the two women into hiding, and then he rides under a white flag of truce to parley with Aguila.  As it turns out, Aguila doesn’t believe that his son would befriend a white man.  The Yaqui chief ties Jim down between two spears and promises to carve his eyelids so he can watch the sun burn out his vision at dawn.  Tigre’s mother (Belle Mitchell of “Soylent Green”) lets Jim escape.  Afterward, Jim catches a ride back into the town of Borax.  He discovers that he is a persona non grata because the Yaquis scalped and killed the men, but the two women and a baby in the wagon train survived.

Ironically, Sheriff Murchoree (Chill Wills of “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid”) keeps the townspeople from lynching Harvey when he shows up in town and generates controversy with his unaccounted for presence.  The citizens have a noose around Harvey’s neck and they have Murchoree crowded, so he cannot get to Harvey until one of his deputies, Marv (Lee Van Cleef of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”), armed with a Winchester intervenes, and Murchoree can extract his six-gun from his shoulder holster.  Murchoree puts Harvey into protective custody.  Later, during the night, Tigre breaks into the jail where Harvey is being held, stabs the guard that Murchoree left in charge, and the Yaqui explains that the guards were going to let the townspeople into lynch him.  Not long afterward, they are pursued by the townspeople and Tigre takes a bullet and dies.  Before the Yaqui dies, he informs Harvey that a white man had a hand into the massacre.  Eventually, a posse pursues Harvey.  Meantime, he finds himself afoot again when his horse goes lame.  Initially, he tries to steal a horse from a rancher, Nick Buckley (Roy Roberts of “Kid Galahad”), but Buckley’s ranch hand catches him before he can.  Harvey meets Buckley and his wife Louella (K.T. Stevens of “Vice Squad”) and explains his awful predicament.  Buckley takes sympathy on him and loads him calls the decrepit looking horse called ‘Tumbleweed.’ An incredulous Harvey is surprised when the animal displays amazing mountain sense and enables him to elude the posse.  At one point, when Harvey is about to die of thirst, ‘Tumbleweed’ scrapes a hole into the dirt that yields water.  Murchoree catches up with Harvey, but he is dying from thirst, too, when our hero finds him.  Strangely enough, Harvey wants to find Aguila because he is the only man who can clear him.  The revelation as to the identity of the white man who worked with the Indians is a surprise.  Our hero and the villain battle it out with their fists and the fight progresses from the desert floor up atop a mountain where the villain tries to crush Harvey with a rock.  

Lee Van Cleef has a bigger than usual role and he isn’t a slimy villain like he was during his usual 1950s westerns.  “Tumbleweed” qualifies not only as an above-average Audie Murphy oater but a welcome departure from his more straightforward routine sagebrushers.