Summer Love

With every review warning people away from this film, one would have to have some kind of masochistic streak to want to watch a film like this. However, my reasons are more to do with the fact that this used to air on cable rather frequently for whatever reason. However, I never saw the film through, only the last 15 minutes, and the last 15 minutes are quite a trip.

It's a film that sticks with you but not really for good reasons. However, the final 15 minutes -- if that's all you saw -- will leave you equally confused and intrigued. And so for years I have thought about this film because I had no idea what was going on. It was frequently advertised as "starring Val Kilmer", and who wouldn't want to see a Western starring Val Kilmer?

Well, I can thoroughly say that his is not a good film. But to be fair, the cinematography is not bad and the audio design is passable. The problem is that everything else is terrible. The acting is terrible. The editing is horrible. And it has some of the worst pacing in movie history.

The plot here is basically non-existent. That's why the IMDB description is so sparse. The whole conflict within the movie is also embarrassing, as it all transpires from a misunderstanding. And then devolves into a bloody mess for literally no good reason.

It all culminates to that finale I talked about at the start of the review. Is it worth watching for the final 15 minutes? Heck no. Is it worth watching for Val Kilmer? No, because he's not actually in it.

The movie tries to be non-linear at times, showing things in the past and then zipping back to the present, and then showing things in the future and then zipping back to the past, but none of it works. The dialogue is atrocious and none of the characters explain anything or have anything interesting to say.

There are no proper action sequences -- even the final 15 minutes isn't a proper action sequence, and how it resolves itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense and will leave you scratching your head as to what you just watched.

Also, Karel Rodan looks good as a gunslinger, but doesn't get to do much gunslinging, and doesn't say a word. It could have been a compelling character but the writer/director had no clue what to do with him. A real shame and a real waste for sure.

I have to agree with a previous reviewer. A good western can be made in any nation so this is no reflection on Poland. I also love a good spaghetti western but I was very disappointed with this one. It looks like it was easy fast money and an easy fast credit for Val Kilmer so he was smart to take the job since it was only one day. I hope the next western I see that was made in Poland will be better. It looks like the actors did the best they could with what they had. Hang in there everyone.

I mean, come on! Now my countrymen have started to make westerns! Is it not enough that our cinema sucks already? Now you need to infect English-language movies with Polish acting and no sense whatsoever? Please, stay away from this movie, do not waste your eyes on it. A 5-year-old baby could make a movie that makes more sense. I am from Poland and I am ashamed this title might actually be watched by you. Please, I am begging you, do NOT watch this movie and if you do, do NOT judge Polish people and Polish movies based on what you see there. We had some good movies in our history and we had some bad ones but this one - it is like nothing worse that I have seen in my entire life. Keep away!!!

Ever wish there was a movie where Val Kilmer plays a dead corpse? Like...the whole movie? Well you're in luck, because in Summer Love he does just that. It's funny because there aren't even any flashbacks, any death scene or any instances where he's alive. He's just a dead body for the whole. friggin. movie. Now you might think what a lazy, pay cheque collecting half ass move, but let me assure you that stuff isn't easy. I've played a corpse in films for maybe minutes at a time after I've bee killed, and that was bad enough. Thinking about having to lie still and do that for an entire film gives me hives. So kudos to Val who sticks through it like a champ, spending every frame all rigor mortis-ed up and dead as disco. The film was released in North America unde the DVD title 'Dead Man's Bounty' a decidedly more genre title than Summer Love, which is all part of an effort to label it as a violent action western. It's It's a western, alright and it's plenty violent. But action? No sir. It's slower than the service I get at McDonald's and very, very European. Most of the actors besides Kilmer are Polish, kind of like Eastwood waltzing around with a bunch of Italians in a spaghetti western. I guess the term for this one would be perogy western. The lead actor is actually Czech, the ever awesome Karel Roden, playing a perpetually wounded and apparently mute gunslinger who arrives in a dinghole of a town with Kilmer's body, looking to collect his bounty. The town is a sour, miserable, derelict place, populated by bad tempered, booze gulping men, and one much abused whore (Katarzyna Figura). The sheriff (Boguslaw Linda) is a stumbling, incapable drunkard whose first thought is to rob anyone who passes through his town. Roden silently navigates this cesspool outpost, keeping Kilmer near and his guns at the ready. Not much actually happens in the film, mostly everyone just sits around drinking and mumbling incoherently to themselves in tones that no doubt sound poetic to their heavily inebriated minds. The whore gets slapped around a whole lot which will no doubt put some viewers off, if they aren't already asleep. The 'Summer Love' title comes from the chorus of a song which is played in an opening sequence that proves to be one of the few sparks of life in this fairly dead affair. Kilmer's trademark peppiness is nowhere to be found because... well... he's a dead guy, and the rest of the cast are basically drunk western zombies who have all lost their scripts. Morbidly fascinating, never enjoyable, startlingly bad.

I had never heard of Dead Man's Bounty when I saw it at the DVD store a few weeks ago, and I thought I had stumbled upon an unrecognized gem, since it had Val Kilmer in it in a truly unique role. Sadly, it wasn't more than ten or fifteen minutes into the movie that I realized that this is a disaster of epic proportions. The first clue you will see of how genuinely awful this movie is comes near the beginning, when you have a bunch of dirtbags in an old saloon laughing like a bunch of hyenas in a scene that goes on about five times too long. It's unbelievable how bad it is. And sadly, it doesn't get any better.

Val Kilmer is featured prominently on the movie's cover box, maybe to trick you into thinking that he has a role in the film, but unfortunately his bizarre role as a dead man is overlooked in favor of focusing on a bunch of half-wit crooks and the most inept conceptualization of a unique town sheriff that I've ever seen in a movie. He's played by Boguslaw Linda, who is unable to or uninterested in covering his Polish accent, immediately making it impossible that the movie is meant to take place in the American old west.

Does Poland have this type of frontier past? I don't know. My knowledge of Polish history is not my strong point, but I can tell you this, The Sheriff, as he is known in the movie, is the worst representation of law enforcement that I can ever remember seeing in a movie. He is introduced in a truly ridiculous scene where he is wearing some kind of blindfold and a roomful of men take turns punching him in the face. Before they start hitting him, he explains that they can each hit him once, and then, after the first round, they will each hit him again, and if he can identify who is throwing the punches, they lose. What the hell is this crap? I am completely at a loss to explain why a scene like this would ever be put into any movie.

Throughout the movie, the Sheriff continues to appear more and more beaten and bruised and drunk and battered, until ultimately he does nothing but show up occasionally, stumbling on screen and mumbling "not…without...the law…" You see, there is a lot of talk and preparation for a hanging, the details of which are as meaningless as the rest of the movie.

It takes place, by the way, in a town that consists of nothing more than two ramshackle wooden buildings facing each other across a flattened bit of dirt that is more of a path than a road. My understanding is that it is a part of Poland that is supposed to look acceptably enough like the American southwest, where none of the characters, except maybe the dead guy, could possibly have come from.

I have heard that Val Kilmer accepted the role because he was intrigued by his unique role, and also by director Uklanski's minimal use of dialogue in favor of a reliance on cleverly timed juxtaposition of images in unique visual montages.

Yeah, whatever.

Seems to me that Kilimer was unable to overcome what must have been the truly satisfying feeling that he must have gotten when he was offered the role. Personally, I would really feel that I had reached quite some level of success if someone approached me and offered me probably a few hundred thousand dollars to come and lay still for a while. I like to think that he didn't even read the script for this mess, because if he did I am at a total loss to understand why he accepted the role.

At any rate, the movie opens with a man bringing in the corpse of a man, played by Kilmer, seeking the reward. Soon he finds himself embroiled in a ludicrous love story involving the town prostitute, the alcoholic Sheriff, and lots of mayhem involving a series of stupid, stupid characters.

There is also a extensive and preposterous lack of understanding of American rituals. In one scene, a man cuts a cherry tomato in half and squishes the halves into Kilmer's eyes (for what reason, I can't imagine), and then later, a man makes a short speech over Kilmer's corpse, in which he explains that he was "one of the finest men we ever had," and then he proceeds to lop his head off with a shovel. What the HELL??

Not convinced yet? Here are some more reasons not to watch it. In one scene the Sheriff appears to be covered with ash, except for the perfectly clean areas around his eyes and what can only possibly be described as bright red lipstick. A man gets a head wound that drenches his head and body in blood. In a daze, he cauterizes it with gunpowder. Smart. Near the end, the Sheriff appears to have a broken arm. Sitting at the bar, he puts a rope around his neck and connects it to his injured arm, and uses his good arm to pull on the rope, lifting his shaking beer glass in his bad arm to his mouth, rather than using his good arm to drink. Also smart.

Why doesn't he just use his good arm? I have no idea. That, like everything else in the movie, makes no sense whatsoever, like the title. Summer Love? Are you kidding me? Avoid this mess at all costs.

In the meantime, here's something for the IMDb Goofs page –

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers) : This movie got made. HA!