Asshole of the West

Westerns, as a film genre, have faded precipitously from the public consciousness as other styles rose to prominence. Sci-fi in the 70s, fantasy in the 80s, and especially superhero films in more recent years have made the Old West seem passé. 'The good, the bad, and the ugly' is one of the greatest films ever made - but how many other westerns can we name? How many have we seen?

Matt Oswalt's 'Asshole of the west' is a vivid reminder that there's still plenty of fight left in a genre that's been increasingly neglected since the 60s. It's a small story told here, but a fierce one. Both featured actors, Shawn Patrick Nash and Kurt Yaeger, give their characters life with riveting, earnest spite and drive. It's to the viewer's joy that Widmar and Levi find themselves in a highly unfavorable place to confront one another, bringing every ounce of resentment to the surface.

The picture is as stark and glaring as the sun that beats down on the scene, and the sparse vegetation in the terrain marks the setting as appropriately desolate. The costumes and props help us to readily imagine the scenario is taking place in a lawless era long past, just as the minimal dialogue provides sufficient knowledge of the characters to present a fair notion of how they've arrived at this juncture.

The honest simplicity of 'Asshole of the west' is part of what makes it so appealing. There's no drawn out exposition, no B-plots or side characters, no line drawn between hero and villain: just two men in the worst place they could be. The short readily embodies the idea that the Wild West was a place where sometimes the only actual difference between lawmen and criminals was a badge, and the very blood and dirt here seems to emphasize that ambiguity. It diverges greatly from the comedy writer-director Matt Oswalt usually delves into, especially in his excellent web series with Eddie Pepitone, "Puddin'" - but the dark, dry edge to his writing is fully intact. And it's a gift.

Westerns aren't entirely dead, but in recent years the genre has not been embraced as much as it has been borrowed, with plenty of series and movies sampling its tropes and imagery. Two of the most recognizable films in the past decade or so to hone in on the style have been Quentin Tarantino's 'Django unchained' and 'The hateful eight' - but whatever one thinks of these features, they still almost seem just another genre for Tarantino to paint over with his particular approach to storytelling.

'Asshole of the west' not only bests them both, but as far as I'm concerned it's the best western to have been made in decades. In 8 short minutes, Oswalt expertly tells a blunt, no-frills tale that believably drops us into the middle of a time and place mostly passed over by cinema at large.

Excellent - very well made - worth revisiting again and again.