...after reading the reviews. This isn't really an engrossing western. The production values are pretty good, but the writing keeps hitting snags. After the opening scenes which show some awfully violent crimes involving the murder of almost a whole family, and a weirdly shot scene of two men, one hiring a killer to kill the family and the other demanding more money because Bass reeves is supposed to be killed as well, the story bogs down and spins its wheels for a while.
There are flashbacks and some other jumping around by the writer, and then a former partner of Reeves is dragged into the story by Reeves finding the survivor of the family, a boy, who Reeves takes to his former partner because...? The former partner isn't a doctor, he's a preacher and also a fugitive.
The story becomes more muddled and leads to a diversion into the preacher's skill at throwing knives, which doesn't really fit into the story, but it then turns into an introduction to a former union sharpshooter who knows Bass from the Confederate army... and somehow, the sharpshooter wound up shooting for the Union.
The writing spoils this film. It just isn't good writing. There's a long, pointless chase of the killers, leading to a long, pointless gunfight in which it turns out that the sharpshooter can't really shoot all that well, but it's OK because nobody else can, either. OK, I won't beat on the writing any further.
Y'all can watch it yourselves and see how you like it. I'm going to check back from time to time to read the goofs section, which is bound to grow unless nobody else watches this film.
There are flashbacks and some other jumping around by the writer, and then a former partner of Reeves is dragged into the story by Reeves finding the survivor of the family, a boy, who Reeves takes to his former partner because...? The former partner isn't a doctor, he's a preacher and also a fugitive.
The story becomes more muddled and leads to a diversion into the preacher's skill at throwing knives, which doesn't really fit into the story, but it then turns into an introduction to a former union sharpshooter who knows Bass from the Confederate army... and somehow, the sharpshooter wound up shooting for the Union.
The writing spoils this film. It just isn't good writing. There's a long, pointless chase of the killers, leading to a long, pointless gunfight in which it turns out that the sharpshooter can't really shoot all that well, but it's OK because nobody else can, either. OK, I won't beat on the writing any further.
Y'all can watch it yourselves and see how you like it. I'm going to check back from time to time to read the goofs section, which is bound to grow unless nobody else watches this film.