The Night They Came Home

As an avid fan of Westerns and always looking under that rock for the next great story-regardless of budget, i.e. "Bone Tomahawk"-I tried to give this one a chance. This one absolutely sucked from the first scene on; and kept getting worse. I stuck it out, but it's nearly two hours I will never get back. The dialogue was preachy and dumb. The camera work was erratic and novice, oftentimes looking like it was filmed on a iPhone. I'm amazed that shows like this make it beyond the pitch to production. This movie was absolutely horrible in every measurable way. I would rather take up crochet or eat a warm bucket of hamster vomit than sit through this hot mess of a feeble attempt at cinema.

One of many micro budget films with a washed up star plastered on the poster, The Night They Came Home pretends to retell the story of the real life Rufus Buck gang.

But instead of a western biopic, what we get are endless musings about race and white-man-bad. The writers did put some nuance into the dialogue though, and it's not as stupidly on the nose as a Disney production or something of the sort.

There are some moments of genuine tension (when they come across a man and his son who they hold an impromptu trial for), and some moments of nuance. After giving a long speech about the injustice of racism to a reporter, once the reporter is gone, the gang breaks out in laughter at the idea of the reporter having bought that cock and bull story.

It is a testament to the actors portraying the gang members, that the ridiculous writing can be brought to the screen at all.

Charlie Townsend as Rufus Buck has genuine talent and will hopefully receive better material in the future.

Production value is nonexistent here, color grading is awful for the most part, and the cheap digital look can make even nice landscapes look terrible. I get better looking shots on my Iphone.

The music is stock music quality as expected.

Danny Trejo has a glorified cameo as narrator so they could put him on the poster, but his scenes just suck the air out of what little narrative there is.

Overall it's quite terrible, but there's talent among the cast.

One of the absolute worst movies I've ever seen. Terrible acting mixed with a terrible script. I can not believe I paid actual money to see this sorry excuse for a movie. The only redeeming thing is the scenery and I mean that is the only good thing worth seeing in the entirety of the movie. Not a part of this movie is any where close to believable and I'm never going to admit I watched it. Required characters in this review are still at 159 so I need to keep telling you how awful this movie is again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

Decent Story "B" western... The movie had a pretty good story line. I liked how they presented the viewpoints of different groups and people fairly and realistically, although a bit difficult to swallow at times. It looked like pretty low budget otherwise, but the actors were very well cast I think and most of them did a pretty good job. People have sort of likened it to a Cage movie where you can't quite decide if it's good or bad. But at the end, I'm glad I saw it. It had a realistic message which was explored somewhat with the interactions between the different groups and different interests. I think a good point it made is that getting along is largely determined on an individual by individual basis and how they've decided to fit in into an imperfect world. Sometimes the good guys had good points, sometimes the bad ones did. Nobody's perfect, and this was a good exploration into the complex communities which existed and vied for influence in the twilight years of the Wild Wild West. Some people will surely find it a bit cringe that any of us ever acted this way, but this is just fact. I didn't regret seeing it, let's just put it that way. I would give it 3-4 stars for the actual production, but the story/dialogue/performances really rose above the other issues with sets/wardrobe and were more like around a 6 or so. I'd say this is just about average all things considered; Acceptable.

I never walked out of a movie until "The Night They Came Home". I'm not sure if it was the acting or the script that was worse, but both are horrible. The beginning starts with a narrator and she builds up what sounds to be a really good story, then it comes across the screen " A True Story". Now I love movies that are based on true events, but whereever or whomever this true story came from was not a storyteller or it was transcribed badly. Whoever wrote the screenplay for this movie has either never written a screenplay before or is not a writer by trade.

Run, don't walk away from this steaming pile of excrement.