Dead for a Dollar

With the help of a solider a bounty hunter takes a job to search for a businessman' wife who has been kidnapped by a deserter.

Walter Hill returns to directing delivering a bitter sweet Western. Hill offers tension, twists, whippings and shootouts with a great cast including Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Brandon Scott, Warren Burke and Benjamin Bratt to name a few. Waltz and Defoe are on form; but Scott is a screen stealer. Writers Matt Harris and Hill's story has all the Western high jinx you'd want from a genre piece. However, considering Hills past work, the camera work is lacklustre, shaky, the sound design, the scene transitions and colour timing is off, giving it a rough low budget TV feel. This sucks the life out of the great locations sets and costumes that not even the fitting traditional score can lift.

Overall, if your expecting the grandeur of great Western's you may be left disappointed, however, it offers top performances and a good old fashion western yarn.

Sometimes you just want to sit down and be entertained and not really think that much. Dead for a Dollar is no The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, it never strives to be a film on that scale. Dead for a Dollar is for entertainment, a western with a simplistic plot and plenty of action, a film which takes its sweet time.

A famed bounty hunter runs into his sworn enemy, a professional gambler and outlaw that he had sent to prison years before.

Dead for a Dollar is written and directed by Walter Hill, who made The Warriors which is his most famous. It stars Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, and Rachel Brosnahan, which are quite big names and their performances were great. Brandon Scott, Warren Burke, Benjamin Bratt, and Hamish Linklater also star. The cinematography was amazing, with lots of stunning shots. The mise-en-scene too was great. You can say what you want for the writing, it isn't the film's strong point, but the direction is solid and the cooperation between Walter Hill and Lloyd Ahern II is terrific. About the pacing, I thought it was good in the first half but it just kept dragging on during its second half. For a low budget film, this is an excellent film, because of how he used the money for the production. Brutal action which he doesn't shine away from, how beautiful the film actually looks, Walter Hill created a good film. I liked it a lot and when the climax happens, when you arrive to the ending, the slow pacing in the second half becomes worth the wait. Nicely executed by Walter Hill.

In old-school-style 1890's-based Western "Dead For A Dollar" Christoph Waltz & Warren Burke head to Mexico after Brandon Scott who's abducted (or ran off with) Rachel Brosnahan (excellent), wife of sleazy tycoon Hamish Linklater. They all converge (with Waltz's nemesis Willem Defoe) in a small dust-bowl town in the territory of crime-lord Benjamin Bratt & his gang (inc Luis Chávez) where shoot-out show-downs beckon. Stylishly shot in sepia tones by iconic veteran action writer / director Walter Hill (his first film in six yrs (and only second in ten)) it's simple & straight but decent fare, especially for those who don't necessarily need their Westerns to be 'modernized'.

With all the cheap B westerns lately, finally a decent one comes along.

The cast is superb. You can't beat Christoph Waltz. He does a great job as the bounty hunter. Rachel Brosnahan played her part as a strong female character. I really liked seeing Willem Dafoe in a new movie.

It has a good story. Complements to the writer, director and casting agency. The movie was entertaining to watch.

It didn't have that big Hollywood feel but I enjoyed it very much.

Coming from 50 years of watching a lot of westerns.

I'm afraid after the mishap with Alex Baldwins movie "Rust", we may never see another decent western.

Terrific director, with a star cast of actors, I was really waiting for this movie to be released and my expectations were pretty high. What a disappointment...

The bad: the first thing I noticed was that the photography was average (at best). Almost tv quality (low level). THAT I am not used to when watching Walter Hill movies which usually have got terrific technical details. Not this time around. Even the sound score sounded average. Bummer.

But even worse the acting performances by Cristophter Waltz and Willem Dafoe were bland. As if they were speed reading their lines without any real gusto.

This looks pretty much like a Corona era movie that has been recently released and has suffered from production and money problems, because I really get the feel this movie was somehow rushed. Bummer.