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4

1995-era Russell Crowe shoot me in a complicated way

6

A western by and for people whose brains have been fried by movies, the old dramatic tropes and stock characters have become so comfortably familiar that real pleasure must be mined from subtle subversions and flamboyant style. In other words, a spaghetti western, but one made in America, in the 90s and with American stars. Undervalued.

1

Of all the ’90s movies critics got wrong, this one might be their worst blunder. Even after I fell in love with Sam Raimi I waited a long time to watch this, mostly because it had been beaten into me that this was a shallow, superficial, melodramatic Western. In fact, it’s got one of the decade’s deepest casts — including Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobin Bell, Lance Henriksen, Keith David, Gary Sinise, Woody Strode, Pat Hingle, Mark Boone Junior, and a fabulous pre-L.A. Confidential Russell Crowe — plus a script full of sharp frontier dialogue, and Raimi applying all of his coolest camera tricks to Western gunfights. What’s not to love? Maybe people were just sick of Sharon Stone by 1995? (I seem to recall people turned on her around this time, but this is one of her better performances.)

6

Don't the exact day I watched this due to Covid making it feel like there's a smaller skull inside my skull trying to hatch.

But I do know that it absolutely rocks. Packed to the gills with stars. It's easy to forget but Leonardo DiCaprio used to have a normal sized head and used to play into his natural charisma instead of against it. No shot against current DCaprio, he's a very good actor. But, like, c'mon.

The real star is Raimi, though. He directs the shit out of this thing. The script's a little repetitive but he works overtime to keep you from noticing that. And he largely succeeds. I only even noticed because I'm so smart, a rarity on letterboxd. God, I love Raimi so much. He should direct a One Piece movie. 

I'm still sick. If you didn't like this review that's a form of bullying.

5

I get the accusations of this as a shallow technique/pastiche exercise for Raimi but I don't care. His overly dynamic, exaggerated comic-book visuals punching up these particular archetypes and iconography is just a total blast to watch in action. Every extreme dutch close-up, or rapid-cut zoom hits in exactly the way it should and the organizing structure of a ridiculous gunslinging tournament keeps it constantly moving. It’s like a sped-up movie geek cartoon of Leone and Eastwood in the best way possible and the cast is so game for its gruesome-silly tone. Genuinely lost count of how many things it cribs directly from Once Upon a Time in the West and High Plains Drifter, and if you told me Hackman walked off the set of Unforgiven and directly onto this one I’d believe you.

8

Directors are still ripping off shots from this — just saw one nodding to the hole in Keith David’s head a few weeks back. Amusingly, this whole movie is a compendium homage to slick Leone-Eastwood stuff that Sam Raimi ingested, metastasized, and made bigger. It is now a core text for movie channel kids who watched it over and over again in the late ‘90s. Inspiration can sometimes be subsumed by technique if your movie is cool enough.

15

When I was a ten-year-old brat I watched this movie on tv. The next day I found out from some of my classmates that they also watched it. We loved it so much that we copied the dueling competition from the movie. We would spend our breaks pretending to be gunfighters, holding duels, standing in front of each other and drawing our pens from our pockets. Whoever draw the pen faster would win. We each had our name inspired from the movie, like The Ace, The Boss, The Kid, Scars... well not Scars, no one wanted to be Scars! He was ugly and he stank! I was The Priest. I was pretty fast.

It has everything: wild gun spinning, lots…

3

If someone had told me twenty years ago there was a Sam Raimi movie that was basically Bloodsport with guns in the Wild West, I would have watched it a million times and made it my new personality.

1

cowgirlboss

12

Sam Raimi make a movie that isn’t the coolest thing ever filled with lively boyish delight and electrifying technical excellence challenge 
Difficulty level: IMPOSSIBLE

4

Bruce Campbell - DNP (Coach's Decision)

1

The worst thing the world ever did was convince Sam Raimi that he had to squash his beautiful style to be taken seriously.

I like A SIMPLE PLAN, but I'd trade it in a heartbeat for another film where Raimi dug deeper into his bag of visual tricks.