The Gunfighters

Look at any western and you can tell when it was made. How? Simply look at the haircuts and judge when they were in style. Two of the protagonists in this movie have eighties-style hockey-hair, and the older protagonist has kept his hippie-days hair. That means the film was made in the eighties. The costumes and makeup are also terribly anachronistic with Matt wearing a Levi's low cut jean jacket and tight jeans and his old girlfriend wearing lip gloss. And is that Ronnie Hawkins singing a nauseating bluesy crossover country tune from the start of the film to the end? Did they sing like that in 1870 which this film is trying to depict? The story jumps from one melodrama to the next, bouncing from a power hungry evil villain stopping honest cowpunchers from watering their cattle, to a bar fight with whips, to a self-defense killing, to stage-coach robbing, to train robbing, to jail-train breaks, to... well, when the three are assisting a birth for a hapless woman on a runaway stagecoach you get the feeling you are watching a combination of ER and the Titanic, with horses floating around in the background. One asks when they might resort to yelling "Code Blue, Ranch Shack Six, Stat" with the jiggle-cam jumping to odd corners of the room at violent jerky angles. Everything in this movie was done before, in several genres! Like Sam Goldwyn said, "Gimme some new cliches." I must find a hobby. One which requires the usage of glue and unusable DVD's. It would be a better way to spend my time.