Dead In Tombstone
Nobody in the history of Hollywood has ever paid their dues more thoroughly or more exhaustively than one Danny Trejo. Starting out as an extra going from one film set to the next (often without even knowing nor caring what the name of the film was or what it was even about) and always seeming to get noticed by casting agents because of his rough, one of a kind look (having honed it through a long prison stretch due to mistakes made in his youth), he eventually worked his way up from small speaking roles to featured supporting roles and finally with Robert Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, he would embrace lead roles as a full fledged action hero despite the fact that he was well past 60 at the time. Still, the die had been cast with him having starred in an instant classic for his first lead and thus Trejo set out on this new career path as a leading man, mostly taking on these roles in the low budget, direct to video arena which in the 1980s had also meant that they would be bad looking movies but in this day and age with the current and modern camera equipment and available technology can still come out looking pretty spiffy as well. What continues to define Trejo’s screen persona to this day is the intimidating aura that he gives off, the direct notion that he is NOT a guy to be fucked with. With this 2013 release, Trejo would continue his legacy in the form of a Western, but not just any kind of Western. The story here mashes together hybrid elements of Spawn, The Crow and Ghost Rider (all dark edged comic books in their own right) and then sets the story in The Old West on top of that. Anyone familiar with those other three properties can probably figure out that the story involves Trejo getting killed by those he once trusted only to encounter The Devil himself who makes him a deal that seems too good to be true. Now, when you’ve already got a guy like Trejo playing the Spawn / Crow / Ghost Rider antihero who’s got to make a bargain with Satan in order to have his revenge, who could one possibly cast in that role that could actually INTIMIDATE Danny Trejo?? Fortunately they picked the right man for the job in one Mickey Rourke, a few years removed from arguably the greatest movie acting performance of the 21th century in The Wrestler, not to mention a guy who seemed to come so close to winning The Best Actor Oscar for that role (after sweeping the rest of the awards circuit almost completely clean) before his controversial loss to Sean Penn that the severely shaken Hollywood establishment appears to have banished him to the low budget / direct to video wastelands in order to insure that Rourke never comes that close to the award again. Nonetheless, Rourke brings the fire (literally) that appears to put the fear in the almighty Trejo, portraying his Devil (who refers to himself as Lucifer in the opening scene but whose character name is credited as just being “Blacksmith”) as a guy who just loves the lawless days of The Wild West since with all of the killing going on left and right, he’s never at a loss for claiming and collecting damned souls. When Trejo lands right in his lap after being betrayed and killed by his own men, his offer to Rourke to kill and deliver the souls of his former comrades hardly seems like something that The Devil would even consider since after all he is eternal and has all the time in the world to wait for them to shuffle off this mortal coil on their own with no help needed from the already dead Trejo. Fortunately, Rourke manages to play it off like he’s bemused by the proposal (i.e. one he doesn’t really have to accept) and agrees to it with a couple of his own stipulations, the first one being that Trejo has 24 hours from the time that he is returned to Earth to carry out the killings of all 6 men and secondly, that these 6 key targets must be killed by him and only him with nobody else claiming their lives before that. In return, Rourke promises to return Trejo’s life to him so that it may continue. And so one year later (just like in The Crow) it’s back to life that Trejo comes to revenge himself on those 6 former comrades whom he once rode with, mainly his half brother played by Anthony Michael Hall, who had turned on him one year earlier while they were robbing a gold and mineral deposit in a small town, only for Hall to decide that he’d rather take over the town itself instead, killing the pretty boy sheriff and putting himself in charge while the other 5 found themselves not only deputized but also put in charge of the town’s sizable gold and mineral mines, using the money to buy off all of the political protection that was available to keep himself in business, all of which was contradictory to what Trejo wanted which was just to take the money, get out of town and leave these people alone which is why Hall and the rest of the gang wound up shooting him to pieces and then burying him. As the main villain, Hall doesn’t do too bad a job since he’s still able to conjure up that metaphorical angry chip on his shoulder (never moreso than in Edward Scissorhands) from playing geeky nerds throughout the 80s and probably being best remembered for that. As a result of that, he plays this bad guy as being plenty ornery along with some unique touches such as acting as if he almost EXPECTED Trejo to come back for him when he first sees him again as opposed to having a reaction of total, abject shock and fear. As for the other 5 targeted bad guys, well, uh, it looks like the sad truth is that none of these others is anywhere near as developed and fleshed out as Hall is, a situation made even worse since the story requires for there to be 5 separate showdowns between these guys and Trejo before making it to Hall and unlike in The Crow (where each specific villain had their own personality and maybe even a trademark so that each of their demises would mean something when they happened), these other guys have so little in the way of real development that half the time during the action scenes and shootouts (where unsurprisingly there are now a lot of other henchmen to be killed besides the 6 main targets) we can’t even tell who is who when we see somebody going down for the count. This is also due in large part to some very bad, wonky editing techniques during all of the shootout and action sequences (especially in night time / darkly lit scenes) that make it very hard to make out what’s going on at any given time (including clearly showing us who’s being shot) and at no other time moreso then when the story blows its wad about halfway through and sets up what appears to be a final showdown between Trejo and Hall and the surviving targets only to have Trejo apparently miss a direct shot on Hall (who then runs away) before more of those pesky faceless henchmen run in to absorb the brunt of the damage instead. The wonky editing DOES work in the scenes between Trejo and Rourke, effectively conveying the idea that if a mortal human was in a room talking to The Devil then reality itself would actually become more contorted and disorienting as a result. Indeed, Rourke maintains what appears to be a continuous contact with Trejo, either appearing in his head while talking to him directly or just appearing outright in the flesh on Earth, sometimes being shown standing amongst the crowd enjoying the mayhem on display. The film serves up some needless supporting characters like (the very hot) Dina Meyer as the widow of the dead pretty boy sheriff (who herself would very much like to kill Hall which is obviously against the rules) and a preacher who alternates between looking upon Trejo with awe as some sort of a dark angel and damning him for being a servant of Satan. Trejo’s ability to absorb punishment in this incarnation appears to be at Rourke’s discretion here as at some points he gets shot up but then shakes it off like nothing ever happened while at another point he literally gets shot dead which sends him back down to Hell so that Rourke can give him a little pep talk before sending him back up to finish the job. Obviously, much of this is meant to all be in good fun (if not a little bit derivative) but when you try to do something “innovative” and “new” with something that is as basic and straightforward as editing techniques (especially in a Western) and your overall final product suffers as a result, that basically means that you’re almost entirely dependent on the killer combo of Trejo and Rourke (with Hall doing solid work as the main villain) to give this one any kind of real entertainment value, and so at the very least they are able to do just that…
7/10