A Tale of Two Guns

I watched this Western while suffering from pseudo-COVID (y'know, you have all the symptoms but the tests show negative), so the oddly muted gunfire sounds were kind on my headache-infested skull. As some of the action scenes were also in slo-mo, I linked the softened bullet noises to the filmmakers attempting to imitate life going slower and softer in a stress situation. May be wrong, just my take.

Some dialogue was good, some was flowery, and some just superfluous. Quite liked any dialogue from the stoic Gunslinger, Artemis Hollinger (Ed Morrone). Direct, judicial use of words that offered just the right level of explanation. I found the costumes and make-up jarring for people living in a hot dust bowl. No sweat-stained shirts, dust and horse hair matted pants, hats that have seen better days or limp, discoloured bandanas. It was all stiff spotless shirts and dresses, shiny hats, whitest of white aprons and patterned vests and bandanas. Repeat shots of perfect American white chompers, women sporting contemporary eyeshadow, and lots of clean styled head and facial hair conspired to crack the illusion I was watching a Western set in the US Civil War era.

Mainly watched to see Tom Berenger again, who can forget his iconic portrayal of Sgt. Barnes in Platoon?

Ed Morrone plays Artemis Hollinger, an uncorruptible and determined law enforcer hired by the legendary Marshall Terrance McTeague (Tom Berenger) to chase the cold-blood killer Abel Cruz (Casper Van Dien) in a classic "good vs. Evil" manhunt.

The mediocre sound quality of the film, the poor acting of some secondary characters, the discrepancies in timing between a bullet impact and the physical reaction of the bodies being shot at (which are in fact highlighted by slow-mo takes) are all strong reminders that this is a low budget movie.

But, if we manage to put that aside, we´re left with a nice story which reminds us that the world doesn´t always fall into the clear-cut, black-and-white model that we´d want it to fit most of the time for the sake of our peace of mind.

Chivalry, honour and ethics strugle to find a share at a place and time where those qualities maybe were rather unusual.

Despite the feeble general production of the movie, director and writer Justin Lee succesfully achieves the task of delivering a story that is worth to be told.

BTW, there is a cute redeeming post-credit scene that somehow enhances the plot twist that the whole movie ends up revolving around. Make sure you don´t miss it.

Didn't go into this movie with any expectations as I was just planning on passing a couple of hours.

Unfortunately it was a poorly made, poorly acted, poorly written effort.

A lot of hammy acting and long winded monologues at key moments. The first gunfight looked like something you'd see in a school play and things didn't get any better after that.

Poor make-up, poor sound quality, poor Foley artistry. The sound effects were inconsistent, the make up was like cheap Halloween make-up, and the sound was all over the place. I've seen worse, but it's been a while. I'm guessing the budget was really low or poorly spent.

B+ movie, I didn't find the audio that annoying as other reviewers did.. What I did find was an enjoyable script and decent acting. A good hunt them down movie that took it's sweet time between action scene, but I didn't mind because the dialog was just so refreshing to listen to. Good simple folks, Bad guys with friends that you would play poker with.

Was the costume/wardrobe the greatest, no, but not horrible by any stretch of the imagination... Was the scenery spectacular...no...in fact not bad actually, yeah some of the buildings looked a little too new, but all in all, not bad.

Just a Western with a different slant than most today's movies take, and it made for an enjoyable view. If not for a few curse words and graphic blood scenes, this could be mistaken for a somewhat family friendly movie, since today's movies curse every other word. 8/10 (High rating for me).