Western

The Old Way

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  • Title: The Old Way
  • IMDb: link

Not even Nicolas Cage with a ridiculous mustache (for far too short a time) can save this movie. The Old Way is a bad film, not funny bad, not disturbingly bad, not uproariously bad, but mediocre in every single aspect. Cage stars as a former gunslinger long retired whose own family is targeted by the someone (Noah Le Gros) directly affected by his past actions. With his wife (Kerry Knuppe) dead, Colton Briggs (Cage) takes his equally autistic daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) after the men in a quest for revenge in this underwhelming tale.

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The Belle Starr Story

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  • Title: The Belle Starr Story
  • IMDb: link

Over the years several films and TV series have made use of female American outlaw Belle Starr, most highly fictionalized. The 1968 spaghetti western The Belle Starr Story with Elsa Martinelli is problematic for multiple reasons not the least of which is Belle’s response to fall in love with attempted rapists not once but twice in the film.

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The Harder They Fall

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  • Title: The Harder They Fall
  • IMDb: link

Although fictional, writer/director Jeymes Samuel‘s film is inspired by real outlaws, cowboys, and lawmen of color from the Wild West. The primary character of The Harder They Fall is Nat Love (Jonathan Majors). Tormented as a boy by outlaw Rufus Buck (Idris Elba), Love has grown into an outlaw who hunts and kills other outlaws while still seeking revenge for the massacre of his family.

With Majors and Elba, Samuel has the two pillars he needs to make the film work while surrounding each man with an assortment of strong characters played by the likes of Zazie Beetz, Edi Gathegi, Danielle Deadwyler, Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield, RJ Cyler, and Delroy Lindo. When circumstances allow the Buck Gang to free their leader, Rufus Buck returns to the western town of Redwood. This puts Nat Love, and his friends, and Rufus Buck, and his gang, on a collision course for an extended shoot-out on the Main Street of Redwood.

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Steel Dawn

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  • Title: Steel Dawn
  • IMDb: link

Set in a post-apocalyptic future where water is the most precious resource, 1987’s Steel Dawn stars Patrick Swayze as a former soldier turned nameless traveler, credited only as “Nomad,” whose search for the killer (Christopher Neame) of his mentor (John Fujioka) leads him to a farm run by a widow (Lisa Niemi) under attack by a ruthless nearby landowner (Anthony Zerbe).

Steel Dawn offers your basic western plot (borrowing more than a little from Shane, complete with a young boy taking a shine to our hero) with a modest amount of sci-fi trappings featuring weird mutants in the desert wasteland and struggle over scant resources. Re-released on Blu-ray, the film is at most a curiosity for Swayze fans and holds little other actual value other than the extended fight between our hero and the assassin.

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Bacurau

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  • Title: Bacurau
  • IMDb: link

Bacurau Blu-ray reviewSet in the near future, the small Brazilian village of Bacurau suddenly disappears from maps, satellites, and cell towers not long after the death of the community’s matriarch and the return of another member of their community (Bárbara Colen). Far off the beaten path, no one outside the village seems to notice.

While already dealing with a water crisis caused by a crooked politician (Thardelly Lima), tensions begin to rise. As the community slowly becomes aware something is wrong, there is also an odd appearance by a UFO and attacks on both a water truck and at a nearby farm.

Without giving too much away, Bacurau centers around two groups – those in the village and a second group who is slowly revealed to be the cause of Bacurau’s recent problems. While the town looks to local heroes (Thomas Aquino and Silvero Pereira) to protect them, we learn about what the other group led by Udo Kier is after, ultimately leading to a climactic conflict in the village.

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