This is one of those movies where people who do 'bad' things even for good reasons must be punished. In final denouement some will be moved but if you are like me you will just be annoyed at the clichéd predictability of it all. It really doesn't start out this way but as the story progresses the intent becomes clear, though we hang on, however vain the hope, that something good may develop. I suppose that's a positive. The director does keep us clinging to our wishful thinking, though we know deep down that our hearts must be broken in this version of the western kabuki play. There are some decent performances. Clare Bowen makes a valiant effort but her character was never fully believable for me. The others seemed like competent stock characters. The direction seemed to be amateurish at times and the numerous attempts to use lens flares and back-lighting 'creatively' I found irritating and distracting. Then there is the matter of a shotgun being able to drop a fast moving horse at a distance of 200 plus yards and other assorted improbabilities and inconsistencies. I hope the director gets another shot. I think with experience and some competent mentoring he may do some fine work.

I normally love westerns, so when I stumbled upon this one on Netflix, I decided to give it a look. Usually when I watch a western, I can find some good things about it and be forgiving of some flaws. Well, I did find some good things in this movie, but ultimately it was flawed enough to make even me realize that it wasn't very good overall. First, the good stuff. I really appreciated that the script decided to go against convention and put some fresh twists in its story and characters. I won't go into too much detail about how they do that, though I will mention that the character who is usually a bad guy in westerns like this is NOT the bad guy this time around. The locations and cinematography are also pretty good, sometimes combining to make some impressive visuals. Also, after watching so many fast-paced and action-packed westerns, this one is more laid back, and its calm and thoughtful feel is sometimes refreshing.

However, ultimately the movie is TOO calm and laid back. The story is extremely slow for the most part, and quite often the movie seems to be spinning its wheels instead of getting down to business. The movie was also saddled with a very low budget, with a minimum amount of production values. The cheapness of the project may also explain that some of the lines of dialogue are pronounced and recorded so poorly that it's hard to understand what the characters are saying. (Even the English caption option on Netflix was unable to understand some of the dialogue!)

As I said, there is some good stuff here, but the movie has a few too many flaws for its own good. It's the cinematic definition of the term "interesting failure".

It's technically very well done, the scenery is wonderful and it's a pretty good story. The acting is pretty good, too. So, why did I give it only five out of ten stars? There's just something about it, pacing maybe, that put me off. Or the ''look'' of it. It looks like it was shot with HD digital cams, and looks like the old TV Soaps used to look when they were shot on Video Tape, and everything looks a bit too 'real.'..Or something. Hard to describe.