Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Walter Hill
Starring: Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Brosnahan, Warren Burke, Benjamin
Bratt, Brandon Scott, Hamish Linklater
Dead for a Dollar (not a remake of Osvaldo Civirani's
1968 spaghetti western of the same name) sees Walter Hill return
to the western genre for the first time since 1995's under-rated flop
Wild Bill. Aside from that movie, Hill has only worked in the genre on two other
occasions – 1980's The Long Riders and 1993's
Geronimo: An American Legend – but the tenets and tropes
of the western can be found throughout his filmography.
48 Hrs is the classic western setup of the lawman
reluctantly working alongside a criminal he initially despises but grows
to respect. Streets of Fire may be set in a pseudo 1950s
neverland but it could just as easily be set in some one-horse town in
the old west. The Warriors takes the climactic set-piece
of 3:10 to Yuma and stretches it out to feature length.
Extreme Prejudice
is a western in setting and setup, if not era.
Last Man Standing is a Yojimbo remake that
owes more to A Fistful of Dollars than Kurosawa's
original.
The Driver
features the sort of taciturn antihero you could imagine being essayed
by Clint Eastwood or Franco Nero. The western is a genre Hill knows
inside out, which makes the pedestrian
Dead for a Dollar all the more disappointing.
The movie opens with a scene that appears to set the drama in motion.
Bounty hunter Max Borlund (Christoph Waltz) pays a visit to a New
Mexico jail that houses Joe Cribbens (Willem Dafoe). The two men
have historical beef, and with Cribbens set to be released in the coming
days, Borlund warns him not to come looking for revenge. Cribbens agrees
that if Borlund keeps his distance, so will he.
Hill, who also wrote the script, then introduces the real central
narrative. Borlund is hired by oily entrepreneur Martin Kidd (Hamish Linklater) to "rescue" his wife Rachel (Rachel Brosnahan), who has been
"abducted" by a deserting black Union soldier, Elijah Jones (Brandon Scott). Aiding Borlund is buffalo soldier Alonzo Poe (Warren Burke),
who knows the whereabouts of Jones and Rachel, but curiously has
neglected to divulge such details to Kidd. As you've probably guessed,
Rachel hasn't been kidnapped at all, but has willingly absconded with
Jones as the two plan to flee to Cuba.
Various plot machinations lead all our characters to a small town in
Mexico governed by slimy landowner Tiberio Vargas (Benjamin Bratt). Jones is interred in the local jail while Borlund awaits the arrival
of Kidd, unaware that Jones has struck a deal with Vargas. Meanwhile
Cribbens has arrived in the same town by chance, setting him on an
inevitable collision course with Borlund.
On paper Dead for a Dollar has the makings of a classic
western. Its general premise isn't a million miles away from one of the
genre's best offerings, Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, in that it largely lets us hang out with a group of characters trying
to make sure a prisoner stays put in jail. The difference is the
characters in Hawks' film are fun to hang out with, and even break out a
few tunes to pass the time, whereas the cardboard caricatures Hill has
assembled here have no such dimensions.
It's mostly down to Hill's script, which struggles to define the
characters without resorting to speechifying. The worst example of this
is Brosnahan's Rachel, who constantly tells us who she is through the
sort of feminist monologues that simply don’t ring true for a woman in
1897. Jones and Poe are defined largely by their race, though Scott and
Burke acquit themselves well despite their characters' limited
personalities. Jones is perhaps the most interesting figure here, and
really should have been the central protagonist, but once he's put
behind bars he's largely out of the picture. The film's biggest shackle
is Waltz, who not for the first time in his career, is badly miscast.
It's hard to get a handle on who exactly Borlund is, as Waltz sleepwalks
through the role, constantly smiling as though he just came through from
a dental anaesthetic. At times he gives the impression of a singing
cowboy who can't carry a tune. As with the recent western
The Old Way, which saw Nicolas Cage similarly miscast, I found myself daydreaming
about what Kevin Costner might have done with this role.
Considerably more interesting than the central quartet is the rogues'
gallery of supporting characters. Unlike Waltz, Dafoe is ideally cast as
the gambler/killer Cribbens, a proud Texan who is honest at cards but
not above cheating in a gunfight. Dafoe has the sort of craggy face
whose crevices were made to collect the dust of the American South West,
and it's hard to think of a current actor more suited to playing a
western scoundrel. Bratt is convincing as a slick Mexican landowner
while Luis Chavez delivers an Iago-like performance as his
translator.
In the final inevitable shootout we're reminded what a good director of
action Hill is, but by that point we've lost interest in the characters
and so the bodies fall weightlessly. Hill dedicates his film to western
master Budd Boetticher, which only serves to remind us of how well this
sort of thing has been done in the past. Had Boetticher made
Dead for a Dollar it would likely have come in under 80
minutes yet packed in a lot more drama and characterisation.
