Showdown at Shelby's Shack

Reviews aren't kidding about the acting. No offense to the actors and actresses but.. it's like if you've seen those fan-made short videos, episodes, or movies that Star Trek/Star Wars/Firefly fans have made. I found the sheriff and his couple constables to have acceptable acting. Other than that, the main characters, supporting characters, the people who'd be in one or two scenes, all sounded like they were doing table reads or something. In minor defense of the actors/actresses, some of the writing was like you'd find in some novels where they don't really talk like they would in real life. I'm sure that does make it hard to act out the scene.

The audio was a bit odd too -- credit where credit is due, they avoided the common foible of movies and shows the last few years of having quiet dialog, loud music, and full gunshot volume gunshots, I did not have to keep turning the volume up and down or rely on subtitles. But (like the opening in the 1970s version of Shaft) there were scenes throughout where like the dialog was clear, then when the are done talking large amounts of mic hiss would come up, then the mic hiss would cut away when the next person talked. The first time the mic hiss came in, they were indoors and I thought it was supposed to be starting to rain or blow outside, until the hiss abruptly cut off when the next person spoke and didn't come back for the rest of the scene.

I'm not a big western fan but I found the actual plot acceptable. I probably would have given the movie a 6 or 7 if it weren't for the god-awful acting, and I was tempted to give it a 3 or 4 due to that but decided to give it a 5/10 instead.

Final note, if it comes on TV, I would advise DVRing it and not trying to watch it live. It's 1:11 long and they ran it in a 2 hour time slot. 6 or 7 minutes of ads every 9 or 10 minutes is a bit much to expect anyone to sit through.

This was a good western murder mystery that was a good watch.

This movie had a decent concept but the story and plot should have been better developed. Also, they should have hired some real actors instead of local yokels...

Writers and directors have to be more careful when allowing a lead character to read their lines with an almost constant whining tone! It's annoying and can jades one's perception of the film over all. I turned it off for that reason alone.

This is honestly not worth close to a 5.7 rating as currently given.

Very basic to poor acting and storyline, far from logical and realistic western action.

Reasonably good attention paid to realism (environment , clothing etc.)