New Mexico and Old Mexico are both a long way from “Deadwood” and writer/director Walter Hill is lost in the desert in “Dead for a Dollar” (2022). Unlike his iconic cable series that leveraged a compelling story played by relatively unknown actors, this tired Western showdown flick features Willem Dafoe and Christoph Waltz. A bounty hunter and a retired outlaw are destined for a final duel after a bunch of boring window dressing (racial taboos, marital discord, corrupt Mexicans) plays out. The pace is awful and TV-like, as if designed for commercial interruption, and the periodic, semi-sepia haze is perplexing.
Archives for posts with tag: Rachel Brosnahan
I hadn’t seen a good Cold War spy thriller in a while, so I was interested in viewing “The Courier” (2021). It trundles pithily down a familiar, based-on-a-true-story path, with little, tiny spy cameras and Benedict Cumberbatch as a salesman recruited to serve as the West’s go-between to a Soviet colonel concerned about Khrushchev. Then comes the Cuban Missile Crisis and things take a dark turn, with KGB agents, dark prison cells, and Cumberbatch looking wan on the Capital A Acting diet. It’s not bad, just jarring. Spoiler alert: We all didn’t die in a nuclear holocaust 60 years ago.
100wordreviews 