Legitimately dedicated to Budd Boetticher, late-‘50s master of concise/economical Westerns, this Walter Hill chamber Western gets a paradoxically large-scale look of infinite desert vistas that would have profited in a theatrical presentation. Starring a nearly accent-free Christoph Waltz as a principled, if quick-to-draw, bounty hunter, he’s gone from playing villains to Clint Eastwood roles. Hired to track down Rachel Brosnahan, Hamish Linklater’s abducted wife, she turns out to be no abductee, but in Mexico with a Black army deserter who’s less lover than temporary partner in her escape to freedom. Hill, working from a story idea by Matt Harris, is given two wildcards: outlaw territorial boss Benjamin Bratt and just released cutthroat cardsharp William Dafoe, each nursing a separate grudge against Waltz. Hill runs this poetically illogical story construction so well, you fall right in line with most of the story and action. But he makes two serious missteps Boetticher would never have countenanced. First, Dafoe really has no good reason to be in the story. Good company, but peripheral to the narrative. Boetticher cut his moral fables to the bone, and usually came in two reels shorter for the effort. And second, he’d never have gone for the hazy, desaturated color used here.* We might be watching one of those ‘sepia-toned’ prestige prints reserved for a few first-run theaters . . . er, theatres, while the rest of the country made do with plain ol’ b&w. Hill also comes up shy on the logistics and action chops needed to get full potential out of his climax, leaving the final gun battle short on suspense & believability. What he does build is enough goodwill to get away with a film that doesn’t quite add up.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Now 80, Hill has a brave, if uneven, output. And few directors got off to a start as strong, as unheralded, as under-appreciated as he did in HARD TIMES/’75. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/hard-times-1975.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Favored cinematographer Lucien Ballard always gave Boetticher the bluest of skies to set off Randolph Scott's leathery neck. (As did second-choice lenser Charles Lawton.)
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