"A drifting gunslinger-for-hire finds himself in the middle of an ongoing war between the Irish and Italian mafia in a Prohibition era ghost town."
This movie wants to be cool so bad. Gangsters with lore, a lone gunman hero, a soundtrack that absolutely slaps and someone dead within the first ten minutes. This movie would be so cool if it were cool.
Alas, it is not. Our hero may get into gunfights, but the bad guys' aims are so shit he'll never be hit. Fights are long, drawn-out affairs with too many bullets and the kind of recoil that sends a man hurtling across a street. It's not fun, interesting or tense.
Not that there isn't stuff to enjoy. The middle of the movie, where our hero has to navigate the two rival gangs who both want him dead. He's trying to make some money and also keep his head, so he has to sell information and bribe people to act as spies, which I enjoyed more than the fights.
But then we come back to the bad: the female characters. Of the three women introduced with names, one is a damsel in distress and the other two are prostitutes. You could make an argument about the violence against women committed by gangs being an example here, but I would counter that Bruce Willis' character is also perfectly willing to use violence against women, as well. The movie is also just weird about sex, and that makes it uncomfortable to watch; ostensibly, the main character is a chivalrous type, but I couldn't see it.
Then we come back to good. The damsel is half native American, half white, and the bad guy who tries to possess her, Doyle, has a white savior complex about the whole thing. It's an interesting facet of his character, as before that point he'd been plenty evil, but that addition made him all the more sinister. (Also the characters visit Mexico at one point, and I was pleased to see it wasn't any browner than the rest of the movie; small mercies, as it were.)
Christopher Walken is in this movie. He's fine: he matches Bruce Willis' constant whisper so you can't hear anything they say, but according to the subtitles they ain't got anything worth saying.
Ken Jenkins is in this movie as well. He's amazing: having one scene where he monologues about the nature of crime and idealism, and forms the impetus for the rest of the movie to play out.
Finally, while the gunfights definitely have too much recoil and too many bullets are fired, any fight that happens between characters besides the main one tends to get their themes across alright. The veneer of society over a face of violence; typical mob movie fare, just without the depth.
It's a little campy, a little cheesy, and sometimes unintentionally hilarious at times, but ultimately: this movie is too long. At less than two hours it wears through my patience by being trite and stupid, and whatever good qualities it possessed are washed away twenty minutes from the end. My sibling said if the movie were just 20% cooler it would be great, and I think I agree. Probably someone will like this movie's whole vibe, but for me, it got old very fast. I hope the soundtrack is on Spotify, but other than that I don't think this is a movie I'll revisit any time soon.
