Counting Bullets

I picked this film up on DVD at Walmart for like 10 bucks. I thought it looked like a fun B-western. Apparently this production company somehow managed to make 12 westerns-one a month-during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. That is impressive even if the films all ended up as incoherent messes and/or complete garbage.

This is the only one I have seen but the film was good enough that I am interested in checking out the rest of the films. The production values are solidly shoestring budget and the acting is pretty amateurish; I think that adds to the charm of the film but you have to love Z-grade productions to get passed that.

But the direction and especially the script are surprisingly good. The shootouts and action build correctly to be tense. The story-even if it well-worn Cavalry and Indian story-does engage and the script is competent at set-up, payoff. The characters are thinly drawn and tropes but their characterizations work and they fit together well as cast of characters. This was a fun find. No one will think this is a great film or breaking new ground but it is an entertaining film made under extreme conditions. It is worth seeing just because of the production context.

Four fake reviews contributed by the movie makers relatives, colleagues or friends, tried to cheat people to pick out this terrible western genre garbage from the DVD garbage bin in a supermarket renting machine. Watchable, at least? If you were in jail and there's only one movie that was shown in the public roaming area, and you've got nowhere to go, then watch it.

What amazed me as a myth is why so many moronic investors would waste their money to so many horrible movies? Many production budgets were over several millions and even more, but their global box office records only shown couple of thousand dollars, sometimes, even in the 5 figure range. Why not used that money to invest in other ventures instead of making movies?

This film is well done. The scenes are impressive. The characters understandable, and the whole show is believable.

Wow, this movie was horrible, at first I thought it was a farce, like a mock comedy western, but it was quickly apparent that not much time was taken into the making of this film.

The actors are horrible, the physical acting is unbearable to watch and cringeworthy. The actors characters/lines are barely put together and lack depth.

Where's the action?

The landscape was rugged, beautiful, and made a perfect background for the men who struggled for their lives.