TALES OF LOHR: "DEAD FOR A DOLLAR"
Thoughts on the new Walter Hill western; plus, "This Week in Warhol"
Walter Hill’s Dead For a Dollar, the veteran filmmaker’s first foray into the western in 16 years, is dedicated to Budd Boetticher, whose name is not as well known to the casual western viewer as John Ford or Sergio Leone, but whose terse, machismo-tinged yet quietly humane style has its own share of genre-savvy adherents. Hill’s own westerns have often straddled the line between Boetticher’s no-nonsense moral strength and Leone’s florid theatrics, and Dead For a Dollar is no exception, wedding the filmmaker’s brutal, whitter-quick approach to onscreen action with some interestingly contemporary narrative wrinkles that help make the film, by Hill’s standards, feel unexpectedly up-to-the-minute.
The setup, scripted by Hill from a story conceived by the director and Matt Harris, is a familiar one for the genre (for example, it bears more than a passing similarity to Richard Brooks’s The Professionals, which I viewed just last month). In the American Southwest of 1897, bounty hunter Max Borlund (Christoph Waltz, revisiting the genre after his Oscar-winning turn in Django Unchained) is hired for a rescue mission south of the border. The wife of a wealthy businessman has been kidnapped by an AWOL buffalo soldier, and, with the assistance of Alonzo Poe (Warren Burke), another black troop, Borlund is to track down the woman and return her to the bosom of her loving husband. But he soon discovers that the woman, Rachel Kidd (Rachel Brosnahan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), has not been taken against her will. This sturdy, self-possessed lady of the plains has struck up a relationship with her supposed abductor, Elijah Jones (Brandon Scott), and they are attempting to flee together for whatever freedom the late 19th century can provide to a “mere” woman and a black man. What’s more, Borlund’s client, Rachel’s husband Martin (Hamish Linklater), is a philandering abuser far more concerned with his reputation than with the safety of a wife he now regards as a whore. Complicating matters is the murderous Mexican land baron (Benjamin Bratt) who doesn’t like Borlund stirring up trouble on his turf, and Joe Cribbens (Willem Dafoe), a former Borlund bounty fresh out of stir…and willing to sign on with the felonious don if it means a chance to get his old hunter in his own crosshairs.
The result is a tale with somewhat more challenging contours than the usual stripped-down, existential approach common to previous Hill westerns. The fugitive pair’s interracial connection is not frequently addressed in overt terms by the characters, but the fact of it shapes every interaction they share with the rest of the dramatis personae, and undergirds both Martin and Borlund’s attempts to resolve the situation with an added layer of urgent intensity. Rachel is likewise drawn with satisfyingly subtle shading. While she does have several monologues that lay out her circumstances in perhaps too on-the-nose terms, her drive for independence and self-determination is not overdrawn or excessively contemporized in its tone. It is also striking when she admits that her relationship with Elijah, meaningful though it may be to both of them, is likely not meant to last, as it is best understood as means to separate ends. Hill’s last feature, 2016’s gender-reversal assassin thriller The Assignment, drew numerous brickbats for its deployment of what is currently politically fraught subject matter. Dead For a Dollar, on the other hand, presents its thematic material in ways that are likely to prove satisfying to everyone…save for those viewers whose understanding of race relations still resides firmly in the era the film depicts.
Hill’s material is well-served by an all-in troupe of gifted actors. Waltz, whose Django performance was a marvel of idiosyncratic oddity, proves just as capable of stepping into the boots of a more straightforward western hero, and he shares a low-key chemistry with Burke as they ride the desert trails together. Brosnahan, in the film’s most complex role, rises to the challenge, carrying herself with a solid dignity and self-reliance that pays honor to the spirit of the women who helped tame the West (she also proves adept with a firearm when she steps up in the action scenes). Brosnahan’s interactions with Scott are marked more by the characters’ desperation than passion, but he proves a capable presence as well, and Bratt and Linklater both smartly underplay their villainous men of power. True to the Boetticher form, the film also allows for vivid impressions from a host of character actors in smaller roles, most notably Luis Chávez as Bratt’s dandyish factotum, Fidel Gomez as the Mexican town’s caught-in-the-middle chief lawman, and Diane Villegas as a hotel desk clerk with stunning steel in her spine.
Oddly enough, one of the film’s main draws turns out to be in service of its principal narrative detriment. On paper, the idea of Willem Dafoe grizzling it up as a wily criminal operator in a Walter Hill western is one of limitless appeal, and indeed, the actor has a fine time biting into the salty, quietly hard-assed dialogue Hill has devised for him. But Dafoe’s character feels awkwardly shoehorned into the narrative mix, his involvement prefabricated rather than foreordained, and by giving him the final big stand against Waltz, it takes the focus away from Bratt and Linklater, who by rights should be the true menaces waiting at the final turn.
Aside from this storytelling hiccup, Hill’s script is one of the strongest he’s penned in some time, with sharply etched relationships and offhandedly literate dialogue. The film also benefits from confident, sepia-burnished cinematography by Lloyd Ahern, a longtime Hill collaborator who can shoot a sleek-looking western in his sleep. And, not surprisingly, the stand-offs and shootouts, cut to turn on a dime by editor Phil Norden, pack a thrillingly vicious wallop, Hill’s reliance on old-school practical effects and stunt work allowing the bullets to hammer home with all the tumbling bodies, crashing glass, and splintering barroom tables one could ask for. The only contributor who’s maybe straining a little too much for his effects is composer Xander Rodzinski, whose over-reliance on Morricone-esque trumpets and Mexican guitars would feel just as much at home in a parody of western movies.
Still, it’s a pleasure to experience Dead For a Dollar, one of the final westerns we’re likely to get from a filmmaker who’s left a serious and substantial mark on the genre. (Hill turns 81 this coming January.) It’s a film I feel confident recommending to anyone who enjoys the western. And if you especially dig the old-school, B-movie-adjacent pleasures of the Boetticher oeuvre, this film will feel like a lost gem delivered straight from Saturday-matinee oater heaven.
THIS WEEK IN WARHOL
NOVEMBER 16, 2004
The Allegheny County Council, the jurisdiction of which includes Andy Warhol’s hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, votes to re-dedicate the Seventh Street Bridge connecting the city’s downtown and North Side sections. Henceforth, the landmark structure is to be known as the Andy Warhol Bridge.
The bridge, which spans the Allegheny River, is one of three nearly identical, gold-colored self-anchored suspension bridges, known as the “Three Sisters,” that run parallel to one another, the only trio of such bridges built in the United States. The bridges are constructed between 1924 and 1928, with the Seventh Street span officially opening to the public in 1926.
The renaming becomes official on March 18, 2005, to coincide with 10th-anniversary celebrations for the Andy Warhol Museum, which stands on Sandusky Street, two blocks from the North Side terminus of the bridge. It is the second of the Three Sisters to be renamed for notable Pittsburgh-area figures. In 1999, the Sixth Street Bridge is rechristened in honor of the late Pittsburgh Pirates baseball legend Roberto Clemente, and in 2006, the Ninth Street Bridge is given the name of celebrated environmental activist and author Rachel Carson.
Today, the Andy Warhol Bridge is decorated with reprints of a well-known Warhol self-portrait from 1964. It is, to date, the only bridge in the U.S. named for a visual artist.
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