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 DARK TOWER" (2017)

I’ve read some of Stephen King’s novels, and--with a few exceptions--I’ve seen most of the movies inspired by his novels.  Although he has never been one of my favorite authors, I’ve enjoyed reading some of his work.  Predictably, the novels surpass the movies. Nevertheless, I loved the two “Carrie” adaptations.  The 2013 remake with Chloë Grace Moretz topped the 1976 original with Sissy Spacek and John Travolta.  “The Shining” was a memorable novel, but the absence of CGI when it was produced in 1980 prompted director Stanley Kubrick to take liberties with the story.  Jack Nicholson saved the movie.  “The Green Mile” (1999) with Tom Hanks didn’t impress me, while “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) ranked as the best King adaptation.  “Dolores Claiborne” (1995), “The Running Man” (1987), “The Dead Zone” (1983), “Stand by Me” (1986), “Apt Pupil” (1998), and “Christine” (1983) all qualified as above-average.  The ending ruined “The Mist” (2007).  Stuff like “Silver Bullet” (1985), the two “Creepshow” movies, “Maximum Overdrive” (1986), “Thinner” (1996), and “The Lawnmower Man” (1992) and its sequel were potboilers.

After watching what “Island of Lost Souls” director Nikolaj Arcel and “Fifth Wave” co-screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinker, and Anders Thomas Jensen of “The Duchess,” did to King’s “The Dark Tower,” you have to wonder what were they thinking when they tampered with his bestseller.  Danish, art-house helmer Nikolaj looks clearly out of his element, and Goldsman, Pinker, and Jensen should have confined themselves strictly to the material in King’s novel.  Hopelessly incomprehensible, thoroughly enigmatic, and predictably formulaic, this dire adaptation of King’s magnum opus “The Dark Tower” (* OUT OF ****) displays little fidelity to the novel.  Pitting “Luther” star Idris Elba as the heroic Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, against Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey as the evil Sorcerer, a.k.a. Walter Padick, ‘the Man in Black,’ the film struggles to generate any excitement and suspense.  Despite his ambivalence about the film, Stephen King has said, “‘This is not exactly my novel but this is very much the spirit and the tone and I’m very happy.’ Mind you, the performances are all beyond reproach. Stephen King enthusiasts may appreciate this version more than anybody who have neither perused King nor the eight novels comprising “The Dark Tower” series.  Curiously, I read the first novel in the franchise about The Gunslinger, and “The Dark Tower” contains only a microscopic amount of the book. “The Dark Tower” filmmakers have omitted more than half of the novel as well as eliminated some of its more sensational scenes.   Reportedly, they have inserted material from later books in the series, but they have neglected to account for many details that must have been left on the editing room floor. 

Jake Chambers (newcomer Tom Taylor) is a vividly imaginative, 14-year old lad, with a psychic gift that enables him to ‘shine.’  Basically, Jake can read minds and conduct mental conversations with others who share his ability.  The allusion to Stephen King’s earlier epic “The Shining” is unmistakable.  Jake’s sympathetic mother Laurie (Katheryn Winnick of “Cloud 9”) and his abrasive stepfather Lon (Nicholas Pauling of “Doomsday”) are anxious about their troubled son. Jake misses his biological father, an NYC firefighter who died in a conflagration, and he resents his stepdad.  He gets into a fight with another student at his New York City school over his apocalyptic drawings.  Laurie and Lon convince him to spend a weekend in psychiatric facility. Jake suspects that the people who have come to take him are sinister, shape-shifting aliens, and he flees.  Walter, a.k.a. ‘the Man in Black’ (Matthew McConaughey of “Interstellar”) surprises Jake’s parents after the youth eludes his envoys.  Walter orders Lon to “stop breathing,” and Lon keels over stone cold dead on the floor.  Walter enters Jake’s room. He projects himself into the past and scrutinizes those ominous drawings that plaster one wall of Jake’s room.   Pictures of a dark tower, a gunslinger, and a sorcerer recur in Jake’s sketches.  Afterward, ‘the Man in Black’ incinerates Laurie on the spot without a qualm.  Meantime, Jake finds a house in the city that contains a portal between the Earth and the post-apocalyptic world called Mid-World.  Mid-World resembles a parched, desolate wasteland inhabited by woebegone people. Jake befriends the last living Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba of “Pacific Rim”), and explains that Walter has been abducting children, torturing them, and using their minds to demolish the Dark Tower.  The Dark Tower is a soaring spire, sort of a primeval Empire State Building, that looms at the center of the universe and preserves the balance between Good and Evil.  Walter,’ the Man in Black,’ longs to destroy the Dark Tower.  Moreover, he believes Jake is the best candidate to topple the iconic structure.  Roland has been pursuing ‘the Man in Black’ to exact vengeance because Walter killed his father, Steven Deschain (Dennis Haysbert of “Waiting to Exhale”), who taught Roland how to handle those six-shot revolvers. Miraculously, Walter has survived many attempts on his life by Roland.  Essentially, Roland blasts away at him, but Walter snatches the bullets harmlessly out of the air before any can strike him.

Clocking in at 95 spartan minutes, “The Dark Tower” is boilerplate Stephen King.  Unfortunately, the filmmakers reveal little about Mid-World, the portals connecting it with Earth, and most of all the background of the mysterious Dark Tower.  The filmmakers in “The Dark Tower” seem to parcel out only bread crumbs of information, while they have glossed over the ground rules dictating behavior so as not to interfere with Roland’s single-minded, vengeance-driven pursuit of ‘the Man in Black.’  Inexplicably, Roland can reload his Remington revolvers with incredible speed, and he doesn’t have to shuck the cartridges physically from the loops in his gun belt to achieve this feat!  We never learn what makes the minds of children so toxic to the tower. Ultimately, “The Dark Tower” qualifies as a formulaic sci-fi-fantasy-Western-horror epic that should have retained more elements of King’s original story.

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.