A Left Over Spaghetti Western

Rating: 4/10 (9 February 2016)

When I saw the Cinerama logo at the start of this film I was reminded of childhood visits to the Cinerama theater to catch classics like " How The West Was Won ". Any resemblance between vintage Hollywood western epics and this dialog heavy excursion into self indulgence would be purely coincidental. Why 70mm mode would be used for a movie that essentially takes place in one room is baffling. The characters are pastiches of western archetypes, which may be the point, but they eventually grow tiresome from intractable dialog rather than by being fully fleshed out by it. The premise of the story involves an alleged evil criminal as portrayed by the essentially lone female character ( there are a couple of other minor females who are quickly dispatched ) who is systematically abused right up to the conclusion of the saga by her captors, yet the failure to convincingly demonstrate any reason for disliking her actually results in generating sympathy towards her. Based on the budget for this flick, would it have been too much to ask for a flashback to graphically depict her rottenness so we can get on board with the misogyny? Instead we're treated to a vignette from the past that can best be described as soft core gay porn. The cast is first rate and the opening action sequences are impressive, but three hours plus is too much time in a log cabin interior during a snowstorm with this set up. The continuity of the tale is also occasionally jarred abruptly by a narrator which seems to be an afterthought. I could have given this movie 5 or maybe 6 stars but then I found out that a rare old Martin guitar was destroyed during one scene because someone forgot to insert the prop, hence a four star rating is as magnanimous as I can get.