The Shooting
A mysterious woman persuades two cowboys to help her in a revenge scheme.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062262/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5updNaVyvBU
This one is the ultra-rare of the bunch . . . especially in the proper aspect ratio. Revisionist Monte Hellman western not to be missed!
I don't know about this one. I enjoyed parts of it, but anything with a twin brother is automatically pretty lame. I hate the twin angle, super tacky. The wandering in the desert was the high point for me. Overly existential, unnecessarily so.
ReplyDeleteEvery western is existential by its very nature. They are pared down morality plays about what validates a human life. How do you legitimize yourself as a living entity? How do you prove you exist? Usually it's through a code of honor. I sorta feel that to bring to the forefront what is already assumed by the very fact that we are dealing with a western is pretty weak.
Not as clumsy as something like El Topo, which is so surreal and existential for the sake of weirdness that it's a total joke, but still a bit too on the nose for me. Making an entertaining movie doesn't mean your out of the intellectual-revisionist Western club folks.
As far as revisionist existential Westerns go, I'll take the vastly superior The Hired Hand over this guy. Willet Gashade is another great name in a long line of awesome Oates monikers though.
Also, I love that the poster says "Suspenseful desert pursuit in the 'High Noon' Tradition." Wow, they really had no idea how to sell this thing.
ReplyDeleteI did like the way the dry ground clomped under horses' hooves.
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