Dead in Tombstone

Danny Trejo on a violent rampage for revenge after having been revived by Satan himself. That certainly sounded promising to me. Unfortunately the movie is somewhat underwhelming. It is not all bad but certainly not as good as I hoped.

It is a rather uneven movie. Some parts are just great and some parts are fairly poor. It starts of quite well with Guerrero liberating one of his gang member just to eventually be betrayed by his own gang. Then it becomes quite uneven. Mickey Rourke as Satan did not do well for me. He mostly looked like an irritating fat slob. I would have expected something a bit more…satanic.

I liked Danny Trejo though. Then I mostly do like Danny Trejo. Some people complain that he only has two facial expressions, grim and grimmer. Well, to me, that is how it is supposed to be. If it is not broken then do not fix it. Danny Trejo should do what he does best and that is to play a grim and dangerous son of a bitch.

A lot of the movie was somewhat illogical and I do not mean the supernatural bits. The second half felt choppy and the behavior of people rather illogical even nonsensical. For instance, take the scene where the townsfolk march up against the Sheriff’s office with Cavanaugh and Clark in it and not only do Clark not seem to realize the shit they are in but he starts to badmouth Cavanaugh & Co right in front of him. Yeah, right, the survival instincts versus stupidity ratio was rather unfavorable on that one.

I did not regret buying the Blu-ray and watching this movie. It is decent enough entertainment although I was expecting a bit more. I also fail to understand why it got an R-rating. I’ve seen movies that were at least as violent which did not get it.

Pure and raw action.

Definitely, Westerns are back. After finding several new and good films, I found this film that, although not good, is still quite decent, within the action movies. It is not, however, the best suspense or light horror film that you can find, and the story has several problems of logic and coherence.

The script begins with a bank robbery in an isolated town in Colorado. The gang that will commit the robbery is well known and has been evading the authorities for some time, and has already committed a good handful of atrocities along the way. After the robbery, however, the gang splits, and Guerrero, one of the bandits, ends up being killed by his own brother, who becomes the new sheriff and takes over the city, virtually without opposition. Arriving in hell, Guerrero sees what awaits him and hastens to negotiate with the Devil, offering to give him, in exchange for returning to life, the six souls of his fellow gang members within twenty-four hours.

As in real life, negotiating with the Devil is always a desperate gesture and one cannot expect an honest result. Lord of deceit, the Devil is famous for trying to cheat and deceive those who are willing to deal with him. Thus, we already know that there is nobody honest or loyal here, and that the question will be who is the least bad and the most worthy of our sympathy. The script, however, really deserved to go to hell for its excessive simplicity and the almost rudimentary way in which the characters were conceived. The dialogues, those, are worthy of an old B movie. There are also situations and moments in which logic goes out the door, like the one in which the Devil says the name of Jesus or walks freely inside a church, when the entire Christian tradition tells us that the prince of darkness does not tolerate these environments or the name of the son of God. There are also huge anachronistic errors everywhere.

Despite knowing that he was successful in “Machete”, I had not yet seen any work in which Danny Trejo had a major role. The most I had seen was “Con Air”, where he gave life to a dangerous Latino prisoner. In this film, he is quite good in the role given to him and acts very well with Mickey Rourke, an actor who also has experience in action films. None of them are brilliant actors, but they serve the purpose perfectly.

It is in the effects and stylized visuals that the film stands out, with the use of grandiose and imposing graphics, very fast and hectic footage, several high impact effects and bullets, a lot of bullets and shots everywhere. All this looks really cheap and devoid of great quality, as if the production had preferred to have lots of cheap effects instead of just a few, much more elaborate and elegant ones. The fights and shootings were choreographed down to the millimeter, and they work really well, giving the audience what they want: pure and raw action, with a simple story and easy to understand characters. It's a niche film, aimed at a certain audience, so everyone else won't find as much to like. Critics might point out the visual excesses or its questionable, kitschy taste. I am free to give them some reason and even to agree. However, it works quite well for the type of audience it is intended for.