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And if you like the genre, a bit better than that. As in, a cut above the usual alcoholic sheriff dealing with your more or less standard bad guys and ghosts in a dying jerkwater town no self respecting gopher would dig a hole alongside for fear it'd reduce his property values, flick.

With the merit of some decent to pretty fair acting, a fair amount of action, a lot of it done on an outdoor set rather than in the phony and obvious indoor confinement of a sound stage (probably because they couldn't afford one, but still a good thing in my opinion), with real horses and period tack, convincing costumes. Without a single bad hat choice on any of the principal players or extras.

To sum up, worth your hour and a half, long as you're not expecting "High Noon", and better than the usual straight to vid dreck being churned out there these days.

Made, by Hollwood mainstream standards, on a miniscule budget yet exceeding the established mainstream standard in both inventiveness and entertainment. Making this film a sleeper worth almost anyone's time, and a must for those looking for something in a vein outside the usual tiresome dreck being put out there whose expenditures come close to the GDP of a mid sized South American country.

The film itself eludes classification by genre, as it's part action film, part black comedy, and frantic surprising nail biting thriller, while being a wholly whacked out free associative grimly strange and perversely funny roller coaster ride of colliding coincidences of violence, suspense and mayhem.

That memory of "Under Fire" (1983) being perhaps this film's only merit, starred Gene Hackman, Nick Nolte. Joanna Cassidy and Ed Harris. Similar premise of war correspondent journalists "under fire" with a much better cast, and way more substance. I've in fact seen 22 minute tv westerns sans commercials with more challenging plots than this film, which has all the depth of an early video game (I'm thinking Pong here, aimed at the same audience (boys ages 6 to 12) only with F bombs and a lot more violence.

The makers of this film wants us to know that this is not all fantasy, that this national bloodbath of neighbor against neighbor, sister against brother, father against son, Peckinese against Cocker Spaniel, you say neither I say nye-ther could cause two factions of Americans to draw down on each other with assault rifles and helicopter gunships being enough for you to "know", so felt no obligation to explain what wildly unlikely events might have led to a choosing of sides to create all the carnage.