Absolutely Brilliant!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The Showdown. I will pit this Western against any other movie world wide that cost $100,000 USD to produce. I have read complaints about the sound of the guns and the cleanliness of the saloon. Please! give me a break this movie was filmed 100% in Central Illinois not on some multi million dollar sound stage. Every outdoor scene was filmed outdoors (OMG what a novel idea). Real horses not some special trained stunt horses. Every actor did his or her own stunts. Granted it may not have been the best western ever made and some of the acting sucked. But the men and women that acted in it never claimed to be Hollywood actors. I dare any of the complainers that ragged on this movie to make a better one for the same money. The fact that none of the actors have received more then a copy of the movie in exchange for their performances doesn't change the facts that each one put in a lot of hard work creating this film. I bought it after seeing it. I am very proud of a Film made in little old Peoria.

I recently hired this unbelievably bad 'movie' from the video shop. I love Westerns. This attempt is absolutely dreadful. Incredibly bad acting all round, atrocious script, horrendous direction and a total waste of time and effort. Another reviewer praised this mess as a 'great amateur' attempt. The dude who wrote that must be a member of the director's family! Avoid this movie at all costs, at the video shop, in the $2 bin, passed on for free......whatever! The goose who wrote the 'review/opinion' on the front cover should immediately surrender his media membership card. He must be blind and deaf! Comparing this tragedy to 'High Noon' and 'Dances With Wolves' is a travesty of cinematic justice.

This has to be one of the worst movies I ever hired. It's not about the money I spent on hiring it, I can always make more money ... but I will never get my time back!Lets get down to the nitty gritty. Costumes and sets, as well as make-up and some of the effects are quite good ... and that's about as far as it goes. The lighting is very bad, it does not enhance the moods in various scenes but instead works really hard at destroying it. The clothes are too clean, as are various furnishings. I've never seen a Western Saloon so squeaky clean you could almost eat off the floor!The acting is less than second rate, the actors (if you can call them actors) sound very wooden and almost like they're struggling to remember the script with such intensity that they forget all about actually acting. The lines of the script itself are very lame and often cliché, which in many instances could make the movie funny ... but it's not a comedy. Some of the extras in the background just stand there like wax dummies (in fact in one scene I actually thought they were wax dummies until they moved slightly). There are movies in which the actors will draw you into their story and make it believable, this isn't one of them, I didn't feel or care about any of the characters at all.The background music is also very cliché. If they had elevators with music back in those days, they would play some of the music from this movie.All in all The Showdown has a very home brewed quality about it, which is fine if it was made as a home movie for the family to watch or for the re-enactment society to screen on a slow Saturday afternoon. I just wish that such a waste of time hadn't been unleashed on the general movie-watching public. I cannot recommend this movie ... and I want my time back!

I sat down to watch this with my uncle and father, both of them just love westerns. However this is more like a 'folks in the woods' rather than a true 'western'. The acting was truly bad, it looked and felt like an amateur stage show, even the guns sounded like starter pistols.Some of the lines in the film are so bad that they are funny, if only the actors were not trying to be serious! After watching this we all heartily agreed that it was one of the worst films ever made.If you are a fan of westerns I recommend that you sit down to one of your Audie Murphy westerns from the 1950's and watch that instead.Don't waste your time with this one folks.