Poorly Done

Part I:

Some of the things that make this a bad movie:

I. The movie is confusing, either intentionally (pretentiously) or due to ineptitude.

A. A flashback near the beginning of the movie gives no indication that it is a flashback. There’s just a shot in which we see people we haven’t seen before, without any verbal or stylistic suggestion that this is a scene from the past. The younger actors portraying Dillon and his wife in the flashback bear no resemblance to the actors playing the same roles in the present.

B. Although approximately twenty years have elapsed since Dillon sold his wife, he appears to have aged at least thirty years, while she has apparently aged less than ten years. The two actresses portraying the woman look so close in age that either of them could have played the part in both the present and the flashbacks. That would have alleviated a small amount of confusion.

C. The two unfamiliar actors portraying Dillon and his right-hand man are approximately the same age, have the same build, are the same height, have the same style of gray beard, and wear the same style and color of clothing and hat.

II. Much of the plot and the characters’ actions seem unmotivated.

A. Why does Dillon sell the woman and baby? Near the beginning of the movie, when we see him do this in a flashback, it makes a little more sense. We are led to believe that he has no more attachment to them than to hitch hikers he picked up along his way. His only description of their relationship is that he has “been dragging them across the country,” and the woman barely protests. There is little or no emotion or hesitation. It’s somewhat believable that he might trade them for gold. But what gives him the right to sell them? Does he own them? Much later in the movie we find out that he and the woman were married and the baby was his. Near the end of the movie, there is a vague implication that he was drunk when he sold them (although there was no hint of it in the flashback). Drunk or not, he must have been pretty pissed off at both of them for some reason we are never let in on.

B. Why does Dillon move his house? It seems to be no more than a gratuitous action scene to give this soporific movie a moment of liveliness (like the pointless explosion of the survey party’s supply wagon).

C. Why do Dillon and many of the town’s men go ballistic when the railroad engineer decides that the tracks can’t go through their town? Did the railroad have a contract with them? Did the railroad owe them anything? Dillon and his men were not justified in showing up with rifles and threatening the railroad surveyors.

D. Why does Dillon murder two railroad men, and why are there no consequences to him for this brutal, pointless act? There are at least two references to a sheriff in the town, yet he never makes an appearance. No one seems to be upset at all as a result of the murders.

III. The actors use accents inconsistently. Both Dillon and Lucy sometimes have accents, and sometimes don’t. Dillon, in particular, is ridiculous because at times he has almost no accent and then in the next scene he has a thick brogue that’s barely intelligible.

IV. Anachronistic speech: “You’re fulla shit!” in 1867? Probably not.

(continued below...)