Bad Girls (1994)

That would have been a more appropiate title for this garbage.Now I'm not a sexist and in these "me too" times, you gotta tread carefully. To prove that I can enjoy an actionmovie with a female lead, I love The Quick And The Dead with Sharon Stone in the lead. This movie does not work. Not because the women are doing a bad job. Well Mary Stuart Masterson and especially Andie McDowell are terrible. Madeleine Stove delivers a solid performance as always. And Drew Barrymore is just eyecandy and shows her very nice tits in two scenes.The women are not the problem here. It's the script. It cant decide wether or not it wants to be a comedy, a feminist movie or a serious western. So it's a little bit of everything, which is annoying. And the story is nonsensical and the women keep making bad decisions, so they get caught by bad men so that they can get themselves saved by the good man. Also funny how the women look good as does the two good men. But the bad men all look like people did back then., With rotten yellow teeth and bad skin. I guess, so we, the dumb audience can tell the badguys from the goodguys. It's like reading a Disney comic book, where the badguys always have stubbles and the goodguys are freshly shaven. There is not nearly enough action and what little there is is lame and boring. Which suggest a low budget. The movie is R-rated, but aside from Drews tits and a little blood, it might as well have been PG13. The badguy, who is a terrible actor as well as over the top evil. So when he is finally killed, with only one shot, it's dissapointing. Evewnthough he is not nearly menacing enough, to trly hate him. He should have been riddled with bullets. You cant set up a badguy like that and not give him a long painful death. But Im guessing ( not knowing for sure) that the goddamn MPAA made them reshoot several scenes, because it was too violent. Either that or the director was simply clueless, how to shoot a western. The badguys crew are impossible to tell apart. They're just there to be rapists and be killed in the end. The only two good men in the movie are push-overs and one of them dies for a woman that don't want him anyway. The other one falls for a clearly much older McDowell. Oh and The Pinkerton detectives, which was real, are also in this movie, but they never catch Madeliene Stowe and are evidently too stupid to catch anyone, so why they are in this movie, I dont know. One of them is played by Jim Beaver, known for his role as Bobby singer on Supernatural. I didn't even recognize him which proves how bad this movie is. I recommend avoding this crap and find the scenes with Drew toplesss. Theyre the only parts of the movie worth watching.

This is actually a fairly handsomely mounted and rather traditional western, if it wasn't for the unrelenting glamorousness of the protagonists. Even when they are dirty, you get the impression that it's designer dirt.But that's OK, because the glam factor is one of the things which sells this western.It sure isn't the story, because there are few surprises (although, to be fair, there are a couple of moments which aren't entirely expected).The confusing thing is that the movie is resolutely feminist, yet trades on the very un-feminist element of hot chicks. I suppose this enables it to appeal to two apparently contradictory demographics.The movie is a romp, which makes it a touch puzzling that Madelyn Stowe plays it very straight and serious.But, taking everything into consideration, it is entertaining, undemanding, and easy on the eyes.

"Bad Girls" (1994) directed by Jonathan Kaplan is definitely a typical Western. It has the riding, the gun slinging, and the cowboys and prostitutes to fill it out. Yet with one large modification, the roles of the women are very different from what has come to be expected as the norm in this genre. The four leading women, even in their given roles as prostitutes, lead the movie and drive the storyline. The first woman, Cody Zamora (Madeleine Stowe) shoots a man for not stepping away from Anita Crown (Mary Stewart Masterson) her friend and fellow harlot. A group of religious zealots that happened to be protesting the hotel where the women worked brought her out to be hanged. Anita and the other two women, Eileen Spenser and Lilly Laronette (Andie MacDowell and Drew Barrymore) pack up to rescue Cody from the noose. From that point on, they are wanted women. They have strong wills and challenge the men that wish to capture them, or humiliate them. I like the idea of this movie in that you would turn gender roles in Westerns on its head, but there are so many instances that made the movie predictable and played down the intended role for the women. The women, regardless of how capable they are at shooting a gun and getting out of bad situations, seemed to just make trouble for themselves. This might have been a way to show the human fallibility, but it further perpetuates the Western genre classification. The only way they got out was though "movie luck," the event where the antagonists' bullets never reach the protagonists or miss them completely, while the protagonist has perfect aim. My opinion of this movie is that it gets a little tedious, has seemingly unnecessary nude scenes, and is fairly predictable. This movie is merely entertaining on a superficial level.

Enabled by the magic of Encore on cable television, I was able to attempt to enjoy two viewings of "Bad Girls" from 1994. I do say attempt to enjoy ....What a rancid excuse for a western.Seldom in the tumultuous history of Hollywood has more talent and more authentic costuming gone to waste, than it does in this crippled dog of a movie. Before ranting any more, however, I will say certain things in defense of these four starring actresses: Andie MacDowell is a scintillating screen beauty, and a talented woman with dramatic flair: she absolutely made "Groundhog Day" a delight to watch and enjoy, and she was so very believable as the starry-eyed television producer stuck with Mr. Obnoxious Weatherguy, Bill Murray.Drew Barrymore, then nineteen years of age, is not among my favorites in the new generation of Girl Toys On Film but she was so easy to look at, that it was easy to forget how wooden her characterization was.Mary Stuart Masterson is a class act. Wasted in this dog of western.Madeleine Stowe has also proved herself as a contemporary screen actress of the first order. She gave an extraordinary performance as "Cora Munro" in "The Last Of The Mohicans" from 1992. Holding her own against a dynamic presence like Daniel Day-Lewis was no small accomplishment. She had several scenes with Jodhi May, as her younger sister Alice, that completely captured the tension and the panic of the moments in that revered classic by James Fenimore Cooper.Furthermore, 1994 was a good year for Madeleine Stowe Mora, as she starred in "Blink," which was very good, and "China Moon," which was really good. The premise of "Bad Girls" should have been a slam-dunk for the talent she was exhibiting at that time, but instead -- and here the Director, Jonathan Kaplan, has to take the flogging -- her character of Cody Zamora is neither lovable nor believable. Maybe the script was faulty, but a good Director has to find a way to nag the producers and the screenwriters to get what he wants for the shooting schedule. Afterall, most screenwriters want to get a good movie on film and the rules stipulate that they can get paid extra for doing rewrites while principal shooting is on-going. This could have been a classic modern western, in the mold of "Chuka" with Victoria Vetri and Rod Taylor or "Silverado." It could have explored the cultural clash going on in the latter part of the 1800s between the rough-hewn and easy-going pioneers and the next generation of western settlers, who brought Temperance and religious fundamentalism into the little towns of the prairie and of the arid southwest. Claire Bloom took the same material -- the character of a beautiful prostitute with a soft heart -- and shaped the character to be a successful compliment to John Wayne's tough, earnest, Ringo Kid.So in Stagecoach from 1939, the entire plot moves around the fulcrum of this tension between the woman of easy virtue and the stiff-necked Puritanism of the new settlers, and brings the viewer into the emotional conflicts of the nine passengers on that stagecoach to Lordsburg. The Ringo Kid, seeking the less-than-noble object of revenge for the death of his brother, is redeemed by the love of Dallas the 'no-good saloon trollop.' Would that John Ford could have had command of the lens which captured Drew Barrymore, Mary Stuart Masterson, Madeleine Stowe and Andie MacDowell around a campfire, eating rattlesnake. Now, THAT would have been a movie worth viewing twice. "Bad Girls" gets a 2 vote instead of a 1 vote because the costumes were extremely well done.