Well you lucky bastards, you get, like, a three-fer here! It’s a gangster movie, it’s a Western, AND it’s a Japanese rōnin flick. At least, that’s what it’s based on, Yojimbo from some dude named Akira Kurosawa? They say there’s only like 9 basic storylines, just told differently. Here, it’s one storyline told through like 9 different filters. Or maybe just the aforementioned 3. or 4, if you count the Red Dead Redemption filter. Dammit! I’m gonna play that one again, aren’t I. Anyways, A bargain of storytellins! Plus, looks fine and plenty of violent shootins. What more could ya ask for?
A guy in an old-timey car drivin some old roads. He uses the empty whiskey bottle to determine the fork in the road. Texas, on the way to Mexico, just layin low. Finds the small dying town of Jericho, and since it’s the Prohibition there’s not just one bootleggin gang holed up there, there’s two! Anonymous “Bob Smith” (Willis) sees he can maybe make a little cash from playing the small-time Micks against the small-time Wops, all while being newly flush in cash and whiskey and maybe a local whooore. Or two. They don’t have much going on there either. But yeah, it creates a lot of local tensions. And deaths.
Walter Hill is a strange bird, a lot a good credits to his name as both writer and director, across of lot of different genres. With movies like The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Brewster’s Millions, Trespass (with Bill Paxton AND Double Ice, the T and the Cube!), he covers a bit of ground. This here, a solid re-telling of the tale through a Western lens, a skilled gunmen in an embattled town. Shot well with a few minor flourishes in gunshot violence. Damn. I kinda am wanting a tommy gun now, at least more than I previously did. Is that such a bad thing? I don’t think so.
