This is a film about idiots, drunks, murderers and lunatics and how they help each other escape and evade the police. The allegedly true story centers on how the Bassett Brothers - Wilbur, an intellectually challenged drunken bigot; Leroy, a psychotic evangelical Christian; and Melvin, a non-descript young punk - help a fellow miscreant who happens to be a Native American escape from jail after he is imprisoned for murdering a police officer and injuring another. The story is just senseless enough to be believable, but despite an exhaustive search, I can find no evidence that this really is based on actual events. Even if it is reality-based, though, it's hard to identify any point or profound moral in this predictable, lengthy, and generally disagreeable story.
This ultra-low budget New Mexico production features a mix of non-acting and over-acting and decent but fairly standard directing and camera work. The soundtrack - composed of country and western music with a little southwestern rock tossed in to shake things up - is also all over the map. Parts of the soundtrack will make you want to hit the mute button (typically the singing parts), but the instrumentals - particularly the banjo piece during one of the chase scenes - are pretty good. The script has a number of problems, but as the film shifts from unfunny comedy to crime drama, the screenwriter appears to have found his element, so the second half of the film is much better - and more sparingly - scripted than the first. The sets are, of course, lovely.
Basically, this is a modernized western gunslinger drama which starts out by introducing the entirely unsympathetic and uninteresting Bassett Brothers and eventually flows into the story about the police and their Native American prisoner. The flow and pace of the film is worth paying attention to and manage to lend some interest to an otherwise ho-hum experience.
Recommended for die-hard B- western fans only.
