Movie of the year

Rating: 9/10 (17 July 2004)

We have all seen and read this story before: at simplistic core, man gets revenge. I might have been able to predict the movie had I not been on the edge of my seat wondering what was to become of the four primary characters that I was now somehow personally connected with.
What was so riveting about the film was its potential to be terrible, the possibility that it could have been like all of the others of its kind. The acting is not necessarily extraordinary, but the way the story is told makes you a part of the movie.
At the end, we all want to be Crecie; we all want to rescue the sweet little girl. But, we cannot, Crecie is in a class of own, touted by the always timely Christopher Walkin character. Crecie is a lone cowboy. How un-escthoteric would it have been if Crecie would have rescued her unscathed himself. In the same way, the film would have lost all its shelf had Crecie been murdered by them. The near perfect ending was the culmination of a great story. It kept Crecie an outsider hero. This movie harkened back to the John Wayne, Tombstone, and Unforgiven days when sometimes men had to define the law with a gun, some big cajones, and by being an outlaw.
The director does not settle at telling the story, he makes you a part of it. It has a life and a character all to its own and you cannot escape being a part of it. Have you ever been to Mexico? Had you not, after seeing the movie you would have felt like you had. The director highlights all the right elements of the script instead of trying to make it something it was not.
I cannot even begin to explain why this film did not do well in theaters. Perhaps the terrible title? Perhaps the really bad movie Denzel did before this one about the framed cop? But, not all great movies are meant to be blockbusters.