Dead Man's Bounty (2006)

I have to agree with a previous reviewer. A good western can be made in any nation so this is no reflection on Poland. I also love a good spaghetti western but I was very disappointed with this one. It looks like it was easy fast money and an easy fast credit for Val Kilmer so he was smart to take the job since it was only one day. I hope the next western I see that was made in Poland will be better. It looks like the actors did the best they could with what they had. Hang in there everyone.

I had never heard of Dead Man's Bounty when I saw it at the DVD store a few weeks ago, and I thought I had stumbled upon an unrecognized gem, since it had Val Kilmer in it in a truly unique role. Sadly, it wasn't more than ten or fifteen minutes into the movie that I realized that this is a disaster of epic proportions. The first clue you will see of how genuinely awful this movie is comes near the beginning, when you have a bunch of dirtbags in an old saloon laughing like a bunch of hyenas in a scene that goes on about five times too long. It's unbelievable how bad it is. And sadly, it doesn't get any better.Val Kilmer is featured prominently on the movie's cover box, maybe to trick you into thinking that he has a role in the film, but unfortunately his bizarre role as a dead man is overlooked in favor of focusing on a bunch of half-wit crooks and the most inept conceptualization of a unique town sheriff that I've ever seen in a movie. He's played by Boguslaw Linda, who is unable to or uninterested in covering his Polish accent, immediately making it impossible that the movie is meant to take place in the American old west. Does Poland have this type of frontier past? I don't know. My knowledge of Polish history is not my strong point, but I can tell you this, The Sheriff, as he is known in the movie, is the worst representation of law enforcement that I can ever remember seeing in a movie. He is introduced in a truly ridiculous scene where he is wearing some kind of blindfold and a roomful of men take turns punching him in the face. Before they start hitting him, he explains that they can each hit him once, and then, after the first round, they will each hit him again, and if he can identify who is throwing the punches, they lose. What the hell is this crap? I am completely at a loss to explain why a scene like this would ever be put into any movie. Throughout the movie, the Sheriff continues to appear more and more beaten and bruised and drunk and battered, until ultimately he does nothing but show up occasionally, stumbling on screen and mumbling "not…without...the law…" You see, there is a lot of talk and preparation for a hanging, the details of which are as meaningless as the rest of the movie. It takes place, by the way, in a town that consists of nothing more than two ramshackle wooden buildings facing each other across a flattened bit of dirt that is more of a path than a road. My understanding is that it is a part of Poland that is supposed to look acceptably enough like the American southwest, where none of the characters, except maybe the dead guy, could possibly have come from.I have heard that Val Kilmer accepted the role because he was intrigued by his unique role, and also by director Uklanski's minimal use of dialogue in favor of a reliance on cleverly timed juxtaposition of images in unique visual montages. Yeah, whatever. Seems to me that Kilimer was unable to overcome what must have been the truly satisfying feeling that he must have gotten when he was offered the role. Personally, I would really feel that I had reached quite some level of success if someone approached me and offered me probably a few hundred thousand dollars to come and lay still for a while. I like to think that he didn't even read the script for this mess, because if he did I am at a total loss to understand why he accepted the role.At any rate, the movie opens with a man bringing in the corpse of a man, played by Kilmer, seeking the reward. Soon he finds himself embroiled in a ludicrous love story involving the town prostitute, the alcoholic Sheriff, and lots of mayhem involving a series of stupid, stupid characters. There is also a extensive and preposterous lack of understanding of American rituals. In one scene, a man cuts a cherry tomato in half and squishes the halves into Kilmer's eyes (for what reason, I can't imagine), and then later, a man makes a short speech over Kilmer's corpse, in which he explains that he was "one of the finest men we ever had," and then he proceeds to lop his head off with a shovel. What the HELL?? Not convinced yet? Here are some more reasons not to watch it. In one scene the Sheriff appears to be covered with ash, except for the perfectly clean areas around his eyes and what can only possibly be described as bright red lipstick. A man gets a head wound that drenches his head and body in blood. In a daze, he cauterizes it with gunpowder. Smart. Near the end, the Sheriff appears to have a broken arm. Sitting at the bar, he puts a rope around his neck and connects it to his injured arm, and uses his good arm to pull on the rope, lifting his shaking beer glass in his bad arm to his mouth, rather than using his good arm to drink. Also smart. Why doesn't he just use his good arm? I have no idea. That, like everything else in the movie, makes no sense whatsoever, like the title. Summer Love? Are you kidding me? Avoid this mess at all costs. In the meantime, here's something for the IMDb Goofs page – Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers) : This movie got made. HA!

Although his leading man days are history, Val Kilmer has maintained his sense of humor. During his marquee days above the title, he appeared as Elvis in "Top Gun" director Tony Scott's adrenaline-fueled, 1993 comedy-thriller "True Romance," with Christian Slater. You never saw Kilmer's face. You saw his physique and you heard his melliferous Elvis impersonation. Kilmer stole the scenes with Slater when he appeared in the background as the King and counseled the delusional hero. Later, Kilmer appeared briefly as a Los Angeles taxi driver in the independent British feature "Played," a 2006 revenge crime thriller in the Quentin Tarantino vein about trigger-happy hooligans. During the filming of a scene where Kilmer's cabbie rushes the wounded hero to a doctor, Kilmer's real-life cell phone rang and he conversed with his mother without breaking character. The director of "Played" loved the spontaneity of Kilmer's improvised dialogue so much that he kept it in the film. Anybody who enjoys Val Kilmer movies, however, may knit their brows in dismay about the new Lionsgate's DVD release "Dead Man's Bounty," a symbolic but snake-bitten, frontier law & order western with an R-rating for violence, sexual content and language.Originally, art house theaters showed "Dead Man's Bounty" in 2006 and 2007 under the unlikely title "Summer Love." First-time writer & director Piotr Uklanski had already acquired a reputation as avant-garde conceptual artist, whose works appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Venice Biennale, long before he went behind the cameras. According to a reputable Polish Culture website, Uklanski "recycles visuals, concepts, and clichés and gives them a new presence, both crass and seductive, precisely by questioning the politics of different visual worlds." The website adds that Uklanski "uses stereotypical motifs and strategies from pop culture, art, and cinema to address issues of cultural identity and authenticity." Uklanski lives up to this reputation with "Dead Man's Bounty." As an example of his "insolence in the way he plays with audience expectations," Uklanski cast " Tombstone " lead Val Kilmer as a corpse. Kilmer's dead man sprawls lifelessly in each shot, staring glassy eyed into eternity without a blink. Never does he utter the first syllable. You cannot say that you were not warned about "Dead Man's Bounty" in these hallowed pages. Most people who either rent or buy "Dead Man's Bounty" are going to howl like a coyote! Like Val Kilmer's guest role as a corpse, "Dead Man's Bounty" qualifies as bizarre, almost surreal. Moreover, "Dead Man's Bounty" is being billed as the first Polish western! The rugged, violent, and ignoble west of Piotr Uklanski blends the nihilism of 1960's Spaghetti westerns and the authenticity of HBO's trail-breaking western mini-series "Deadwood." Uklanski depicts western violence as indiscriminate, sanguinary, and often satirical. The sympathetic heroes and dastardly villains that you would expect to find in a traditional western are absent from "Dead Man's Bounty." Indeed, Uklanski appropriates traditional western elements as a metaphor, but he retools the genre to accommodate his skewered ideology. Happily, the scenic Polish landscape substitutes splendidly for the arid 19th century American Southwest, and lenser Jacek Petrycki's evocative widescreen photography provides a feast of striking images comparable to Frederic Remington. "Dead Man's Bounty" emerges as a mythic western. The characters lack names. Their occupation dictates their identity. This symbol-laden saga opens as a Stranger in black (Czech actor Karel Rogen of "Blade 2") finds a number of dead bodies at a river crossing by a burned stagecoach. He discovers the fly-infested corpse of the Wanted Man (Val Kilmer of "The Saint") among them. The Stranger rides into an anonymous frontier town but loses everything, including the body of the Wanted Man--worth five hundred dollars--to a drunkard (Boguslave Linda), the town sheriff who behaves erratically. As his favorite pastime, the sheriff dons eye patches and bets gamblers that he can identify them the second time they smash their fists into his face. "Dead Man's Bounty" probably trots too far off the trail for traditional cowboy movie enthusiasts.The Stranger's next mistake is sleeping with the woman (Katarzayna Figura) who owns the town saloon. Afterward, the locals confront him with their guns and try to disarm him. When the Stranger drops his rifle, the weapon discharges accidentally and hits one of the locals in the leg. A crazy gunfight ensues with bystanders becoming casualties. One local wounds the Stranger in the head, and the drunken sheriff gathers a posse to pursue him. Later, the Stranger cauterizes his bloody head wound with gunpowder from his own bullets that he ignites with a pair of matches. Clearly, Uklanski has seen the Clint Eastwood oater "Two Mules for Sister Sara.""Dead Man's Bounty" mimics westerns in general and Sergio Leone Spaghetti westerns in particular. The joke here is that most Spaghetti westerns featured an unknown or faded American star, and Uklanski exploits Kilmer with the same idea in mind for his Pierogi western but only as a corpse. Uklanski directs with a heavy hand and the pace is often leaden. On the other hand, "Dead Man's Bounty" is rarely predictable. Unless you fancy yourself a connoisseur of pretentious, postmodernist art, "Dead Man's Bounty" may give you saddle sores. Meanwhile, Kilmer buffs who don't share their star's sense of humor may find "Dead Man's Bounty" too tough a horse to ride.

I found it great! It must be one of the most multi-dimensioned films I've watched lately. I definitely need to watch it a couple of times again to actually grasp everything it "says". There are some really "hand-picked" characters in this and the actors do a great job for this. Loved the idea of Val Kilmer playing the role of a dead body. The photography was very good and at some points, almost ingenious! Perfect combinations of colors! Last but not least, the soundtrack, suits the film like a glove, with all its twisted sort-of-western, sort-of-love-story, sort-of-anything-else character. Unconditionally recommended! Trust me, you will have some good laughs, also! I'm looking forward to watching more movies by Piotr Uklanski.