A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Sometimes I read negative reviews on IMDB and AMAZON and wonder what planet some of the reviewers are on. Not every film can have a budget of millions so it is not always fair to compare smaller indie films like this with the likes of the remake of The Magnificent Seven. But this is a cracking good western and if you like good action and fine performances in the old tradition of the western then this is for you. I can tell you from personal experience that negative reviews without any positivity in them simply shows a lack of understanding. We need more westerns like this to keep the genre alive and kicking!

The storyline itself was not bad - although quite a lot of the lead's back story seems to have been lifted straight from the Hell on Wheels series and the script itself was really poor. Two different characters separately wishing him "Godspeed" in the space of a minute for example!The direction and large parts of the acting however were so clunky that it was verging on spoof - even the worst of the Spaghetti Westerns were not as bad as this and they were made forty years earlier!In the almost obligatory chase scene near the end of the movie the two protagonists seemed to constantly switch between cantering and trotting on their horses and that's not to mention the fact that bullets took an age to reach their target after being fired! After watching this I had to check out the director's CV and could not believe that anyone ever sanctioned him to make a second film let alone the couple of dozen that he has done.Not even a turkey - this was so bad that even "Colonel Sanders" would have rejected it!

For a western its the typical bad guys tear up a town and the good guy rides in to save the day. The town seems pretty small with only about 20 people in all but they seem to keep getting bad guys to pop up from everywhere. The editing is terrible, there's parts of the film where the fight scenes speed up and skip frames. The sets are nice and really believable, the one thing that isn't believable is the female "bad girl" named lulca or something like that. She has so much plastic surgery it makes her look out of place in the movie. Her lips are swelled and to big, she constantly looks like shes frowning. All in all it was fun to watch and helped pass the time, would I watch it again? would i recommend it to anyone? probably not.

OK. Let me explain. This was such a good attempt. Some money's been spent, (not on the script, admittedly). It's been spent on some decent sets, a few actors, some (occasionally decent) cinematography.And in these days, a straightforward Good-v-Evil western is refreshing, or, rather, SHOULD BE refreshing. And this tries hard. And (sadly) fails.The storyline is OK, derivative, but modernised, and - well - OK, what can I say, it's just alright.The acting's OK, pretty good, in parts. The hero, well, he's a hero. We are in NO DOUBT that he's a good guy.The women are - well, women, really. The strong mother is OK, ('til the end bit, where she mainly screams and doesn't shoot anything), but mainly the women are pretty 2 dimensional, apart from the one who has so much plastic in her lips she looks like she has her mouth on upside down, and she disappears from the story in a really unconvincing way.Oh, I don't know. I wanted to like this. I watched it to the end, (Parenthood meets Mum's Apple Pie), and I'm not left with an AWFUL taste in my mouth, just a bitter disappointment. It should have been better.OK. To be honest? If the producer had hired a decent director, it would have been better.And he also should have spent a few dollars on someone to direct his fight scenes. That last one is pretty bad.But, OK, I gave it a 6 out of 10. Because it wasn't THAT bad. Just it should have, could have, been far better.