Six Gun (2008)

This movie is so bad it inspired me to register and post a review! All reviewers so far, have been way too kind. The only redeeming quality of this film is the acting is actually better than some high-dollar movies I have seen. The producers should have hired some writers. Making up the dialog as you, go never works. The local high school drama department should have been hired to produce a better product. I suspect someone with too much money wanted to get his girl friend into show business and this was his bright idea. There is no way to write ten lines of comments on a movie this bad without coming off as being vindictive. I had nothing to do with the making of the movie, yet I am embarrassed because I normally enjoy watching Westerns. How do I get a refund on the time I wasted waiting for this movie to get better?

Vampires would have given this movie a little more emotional draw, either for comedic effect or some tension and fright, but without, it was just tired, and tiring to finish/watch... Obviously low budget (the sets looked like possibly rented, historically preserved, vintage 'Old West' sites in the Texas Hill Country - the buildings looked too new, the 'streets' of the 'towns' had grass growing in them, so obviously not much horse traffic in these Western vignettes, and when 'the gang' escaped to 'San Antone', they were the only people in the town, except for the occasional stock shot of 'a local' peeping out of a window at 'the gang' wandering around this empty town...extras to fill out the scenes must not have been in the budget...) and poorly edited (this did lend some comedic effect - whilst riding through 'the countryside', I spotted a pickup truck behind some trees; and one scene had Violet, the tired old whore, just staring intensely at the 'prepubescent kidnapped new meat' young girl/not yet whore, for no apparent reason...however, even these scenes were too few to qualify this as a comedy...and I believe this was meant to be a serious, dramatic Western...) This movie had enough funding to get shot and edited, but not enough to hire enough extras and provide production value. The acting wasn't horrible but the story and the character development was slender, even with a 90 minute or so run-time...Tommy's character, the hero, needed it, since everything seemed to revolve around him and his flaws, and the fact there were so many men living at his homestead seemed gay...now, that would have been an interesting plot development, but we do know his wife died, he had a son (without much development of this character or need to be in the story, other than as a motive for revenge later, but that motive was provided in the 1st 15 minutes of the movie...) and he has a German sidekick who looked to be in his 60's and has been with Tommy since he was a child (Tommy had killed his parents in a robbery and then took the sidekick in because he had a conscience attack and couldn't finish the boy off...), yet Tommy looks younger than the sidekick...Tommy refuses a relationship with Violet, the aged whore, so the possibility he was gay certainly could have been in play...There were no Clint Eastwoods in this movie and they needed one. Clint was able to make his shoestring budget spaghetti Westerns work by the sheer force of his personality and given that this movie obviously didn't have the budget to fly to Spain and Clint wasn't in it, don't have high expectations when renting this stinker...but if you have 90 minutes to kill and you have seen everything else, give it go...there are some unintended snicker moments in the film due to the poor editing.

There is little redeeming about this film.The story is weak and uninteresting. Without giving any spoilers, a retired old bounty hunter-turned-rancher comes out of retirement to save his ranch with a quick, one-time job and ends up in over his head. There is not a surprise to be had and while the film runs at just over 90 minutes, that little set up is already stretched beyond the breaking point long before the end.The characters, one and all, are one-dimensional stock characters. They range from the weathered, drunken old man called out of retirement to go back to the job he hates but knows how to perform (Tommy) to the comic relief of the idiotic young sidekick (Will) to the unfeeling, perverted saloon owner (Jake).It's also loaded with attempts at comedy that are universally both juvenile and clichéd. There is no intentional comedy here that works.The acting, even though the actors have little to do, is awful. Tommy Hill gives a reasonable performance as Tommy Hill and Marlene Perez is fine in a very small and simple part, but everyone else is downright awful. The worst offender is Bill Wise (ironically, the only one of this bunch with any kind of resume, holding 35 credits on the IMDb before this release), who mugs for the camera as though he is some sort of irresistibly charming comic and doesn't even bother to try to act. But he's not alone: Sue Rock is frighteningly bad--obviously checking to make sure she's at the proper cleavage level on a regular basis and giving no performance; Robert Graham is absolutely laughable in his attempt to command the screen and appear evil; and Eric Perry seems to be holding in his laughter from start to finish.The sets are laughably fake, looking like a high school theater's attempt at an old west set. Much of the "wood" is all brand new, unscratched, un-cracked, and some of it does not even have much grain to it (and I have a sneaking suspicion that much of it was not actually wood). The trim colors on the buildings are too bright and distracting (not to mention not befitting of the era). The nature shots are mostly of a lush, forest-covered area that absolutely does not evoke the Old West.The gunfight sequences are some of the most unintentionally hilarious things ever filmed--loaded with people who stand five feet away from the "heroes" but can't see them or miss them repeatedly and repeat after repeat of the same shot.The lighting is all attempting to mimic natural lighting instead of trying to heighten anything dramatically, and it even often fails to do that, leading to shadows where they are inappropriate both realistically and dramatically and strange coloring that means absolutely nothing.The music completes the picture with a mix of western clichés that are never even appropriate to the situation (i.e., there is chase music during a gunfight or comedic music during "emotional" scenes). In essence, it's a microcosm of what a mess the entire film is.All told, this film does not even meet minimum standards of professionalism that we expect from any movie. Beyond that, it's a tangle of clichés, bad jokes, horrible acting, awful music and poor visual effects. To be avoided.