Very well executed

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The plot is familiar enough. An innocent accountant in the old West is accused by the local strong man of killing his son and stealing his fine, spirited pinto horse. The head honcho is played by a magnificently coiffured Robert Mitchum, ably assisted by my one-time co-star John Hurt. Which reminds me -- what a cast. Half a dozen famous names showed up for one day's work. The accountant is injured and wobbles across rivers and over mountains at the timberline until he is discovered by an all-knowing and endearing Indian. The Indian is pretty weird but then, if the plot is familiar, perishing white man saved by Indians, the treatment is like nothing much you've ever seen before.Lance Henrickson, whose work I've always enjoyed, is a heartless killer who shoots comrades in the back of the head on a whim. Gary Farmer is the plump Indian whose people are slowly being wiped out by the white eyes. He can smell them a mile away. They sell blankets smothered in the variola virus -- smallpox, which is a bad way to go unless you enjoy the sensation of your pustular skin sloughing off. Yet the Indian doesn't make a speech out of it. He's not a figure of pity. There's just a passing mention of these goings on.As the Indian, Farmer was captured by while people as a child and sent in a cage from one city to another so the citizens could pay to take a look at the barbarian. At one point he found himself in England, where they forced him to go to school,. The name of the protagonist's character, played by Johnny Depp, is William Blake and Farmer adores the work of THE William Blake and gets his protogé mixed up with the author. He quotes the original Blake at odd moments, and not just "Tiger, tiger, burning bright," but the mystical stuff that nobody understands.It ends on America's Northwest Coast, all rain, mist, decay, and sea scent. The viewer ought to take note of the art work. It's pretty distinctive and, if I can say so, quite beautiful in its own way, as stylized as the film itself. I don't think I'll spell out the end. It objectifies James Joyce's observation: "We'll meet again, we'll part once more."

When I first heard the strum of a distorted guitar ten minutes into the movie, I thought "wow, that was annoying, I hope that never happens again'... If only I knew that the entire score was the same f***ing sound repeated for every literal beat of this movie.Nothing about this movie works:-the editing was so poorly executed that I thought my Wifi went down.-Every transition is just a fade to black as if it was made for TV in the 70's-The writing feels like a flower child wanted to write about his inner workings, but was too pretentious, high, and incompetent that it comes off as such. Any symbolism or spiritual undertones are so incredibly flat and obvious that it's ridiculous to even be labeled as 'cerebral' on Netflix.-the acting (aside from the young Depp) was so poor that it felt like a soap opera. everything from the stuck up, angry old man in his office, to the stereotyped Indian cut-outs to the shoot-out at the very end of the movie that made me burst out laughing at how lazy, stupid, and melodramatic it was.-there's no reason to film in black and white, nothing else was ever attended to in cinematography because it looked semi-artsy enough to hold over a regular audience without making anything original or coherent.-every act of violence in this movie appears to be baby's first SFX, the man's head getting crushed looked like f***ing clay. the child getting hit with a rifle didn't even come close to contact. The makeup of Depp's face looks like it was made of crayola wax.Don't watch this movie unless you have a hard-on for style over substance. but even then, there is no style to this movie, it's garbage. the only way this kind of laziness could be accepted is if it was made in the 30's. This came out the same year as Braveheart, 12 Monkeys, Heat, Se7en, and The Usual Suspects...This is 2 hours of your life that not only will you not get back, but they will be forced out of you like a f***ing laxative.

I began viewing Jarmusch films after "Under the Skin" this year, 2014, which very much intrigued me. I've also seen "Permanent Vacation," "Mystery Train" and now "Dead Man." Tempo seems always important, rhythmic, slow. It sometimes feels like characters are sleepwalking and innocence becomes a fragile metamorphosis of condition or circumstance and often wonderful humor as in "Mystery Train" when an Italian woman from Rome has landed in the wrong city and during her layover people prey upon her for money. She is so deadpan as she offers a guy money to just go away but does it with such lightness. Jarmusch's characters have depth and wonderful contrasts as when one of the hired bounty hunters of William Blake in Dead Man comes across two recently killed government hires and comments, "If he keeps killing marshals I might grow to like the bastard." In a world that prefers not to look below the surface, Jarmusch shows us who we really are with a stoicism and pathos where light and dark are truly the horizon where they meet.

Timid accountant William Blake arrives at the west-end of the world and finds his promise of a new job broken and a short acquaintance with a free-spirited woman turned into a false charge of double-murder. With a bullet in his chest, he's aided by whacked-out Indian Gary Farmer, who believes him to be the earthbound spirit of the same-named poet. Meanwhile, a trio of hired killers, including motor-mouthed Michael Wincott and psychopath (and reputed cannibal!) Lance Henrikson, are soon on his trail.Weird, violent, and often times quite surreal, one doesn't know whether this acid western is supposed to be dead-serious or a put-on, as it's equal parts action/adventure, comedy, and art-house pretentiousness, very much a product of the mid-nineties.Although it's a pinch too long, it's never boring, with an almost always entertaining Depp losing his sanity bit-by-bit with each graphically violent encounter (with gore FX by Steve Johnson!), usually involving flashy guest stars like Billy Bob Thornton (who's Slingblade in turn guest-starred director Jim Jarmusch), Iggy Pop, Jared Harris (as a trio of degenerates), Gabriel Byrne, and Alfred Molina as a racist scripture- quoting trader. Other guest stars include Crispin Glover, John Hurt, and Robert Mitchum, in his final western appearance.The ugliness of it all is beautifully photographed in black and white and set to a quasi-psychedelic score by Neil Young(!), who in turn was the subject of a documentary/concert film from Jarmusch.