Taken from Rio Bravo

TAKEN FROM RIO BRAVO is an indie western that turns out to be a sequel to ASSAULT ON RIO BRAVO, which I haven't seen, and features a couple of returning characters. I don't feel like I missed much there. This is pretty lamentable stuff, just about passable as a B-grade kind of outing, involving an outlaw gang who kidnap a number of women and the heroes who team up to get them back again. As with most low budget films in this genre, the landscape impresses but the performances don't, particularly the wooden Nevsky. Don 'The Dragon' Wilson has a small role as an Indian tracker and Cynthia Rothrock has an even smaller role, so tiny that I actually missed it.

It would be mean to spoiler and deprive you of the watching joy, thus i limited my reviews to points which became better:

1. The plot - elaborated and consistent - great work.

2. Landscapes filming - just magnificent panoramas.

3. Shooting scenes - inheriting the best of westerns 4. Operator work (i rate some sequences better than in John Wick) 5. More first-class actors and new faces 6. Sudden comeback of some previous characters 7. English of the starring Alex Nevsky

One star less since the movie has too much flashbacks to the Gunfight at Rio Bravo.

The fan base knows the original by heart. And if you don't know it, just watch first.

This film is capable of conquering the heavens themselves. Alexander Nevsky once again shocked his fans with his brilliant vision of cinema. From the script to the direction, everything in this film is great. It is impossible to express in words the depth of my admiration. Man could not create this masterpiece. Only you, Alexander, the true incarnation of Apollo on earth, could have done this!

Watching your movie, I cried with happiness. My family wept with me, amazed at your unsurpassed genius. You've turned my perception of cinema upside down. Your representation of the Wild West was so historically accurate that I'm afraid you got access to Nikita Mikhalkov's secret documents. You have proved to the haters once and for all the insignificance of their claims. Bravo, Mr. Nevsky, Hollywood is at your feet.

Your place is not among people, but on Olympus!

Just another "masterpiece " with Alexander Nevsky (his real surname is Kuritsyn, that means Chicken) - a self proclaimed "actor", "Mr Universe " (he actually claims he won the same title in bodybuilding as...Schwarzenegger!:)), which is insane, as he never won any, and if you really care enough to expose this impudent fraudster- google the Mr Universe winners of all times and try to find Alexander Nevsky in there. Good luck. So, this Russian-born "wanna-be Schwarzenegger" is constantly commiting publicity fraud, taking pictures with various clueless Hollywood actors, and presenting himself as their good friend, while producing ridiculously bad, money-laundry movies, where he acts as a preposterously awful high school actor with non-existent charisma. Poor guy. His mental disease is progressing, and the more he spends on acting, the more lamer his character becomes. A unique case. His "movies" must be considered only as comedies, and that strong feeling of shame that you obtain from those, only indicates of your healthy intelligence. P. S. He writes all the praising comments for himself, along with his circus members. A very cheap and talentless fraud.

Now, the synopsis for the movie actually sounded interesting enough to make me decide to sit down and watch the movie. Usually I am not particularly keen on Western movies, but do watch one every now and again. However, I have to say that I had some expectations to the movie from what the synopsis presented. However, writers Craig Hamann and Alexander Nevsky dropped the ball here, because the movie proved to be a massive swing and a miss.

Granted, I have not watched the 2023 Western "Gunfight at Rio Bravo", so I don't know how much of this 2024 sequel was lost on me as I didn't know what transpired in the first movie.

Of the entire cast ensemble in the movie, I was only familiar with Don Wilson, Matthias Hues and Cynthia Rothrock. The acting performances in the movie were for the most parts fair enough, but then there was Alexander Nevsky.

Right, well Cynthia Rothrock as a woman in 1874 performing martial arts didn't exactly come off as being a particularly realistic or plausible thing. It was just such a poorly mixture of martial arts and Western, and it didn't work. And having Don Wilson, whom is part Japanese, play a native American, well...

Director Joe Cornet didn't deliver an impressive Western experience, and this was a movie that will just as quietly fade into oblivion as it quietly managed to sneak in under the radar. Not even if you are a diehard Western fan then I wouldn't recommend you to sit down and watch "Taken From Rio Bravo".

My rating of this 2024 farce of a Western movie lands on a very, very generous two out of ten stars.