The Gundown

• Directed by Dustin Rikert
• September 13, 2011

A man finds himself in a lawless town where he is forced into a showdown to protect a saloon and a beautiful woman.

Random choices on ANY streaming service are a risk. It may sound adequate to great in the description but if you have never heard of whatever it is then what do you really know? Such is the case with The Gundown. It sounded adequate. Not great but not a total loss.

This was slightly on the cheap side. Not no budget cheap but little budget cheap. Some of the clothing looks as if it was taken from a country western store while others looks like something from a more traditional Western. You might even think some of the performers went through their own closets.

One of the more egregious sins is the use of bad computer graphics for gunshots and blood splatter. Somebody got shot and that’s cheap CGI. Yet there is what appears to be more traditional effects when the body is next seen. Based on the difference in color with what I am certain is CGI appearing brighter with the more practical effects being darker.

Then there is the use of a recognizable name in the cast for the implication of greater quality than is actually present. Peter Coyote as Thomas Morgan is in this for approximately 20 minutes. A smidge less actually. It is the sheen of star power or credible talent amongst a cast of complete unknowns. They may be big in the No Budget community but even that will not get them bumped up in line at a fast-food restaurant. Not that Coyote was trying. He was obviously in it for an easy check.

I must say William Shockley as the villain Travis McCain put serious effort forward and displayed a level of talent largely missing from The Gundown. He put Coyote to shame. Maybe he’ll never win an Academy award, but he certainly has polish and skill to get bigger. His McCain is the kind of villain you almost want to win Shockley is that good to watch. His female counterpart Dulce de la Rosa (Veronica Milagros as Veronica Diaz) was generic and has such a significant amount of collagen pumped into her lips I’m convinced they could be used as a floatation device. It really does take you out of the whole story.

The thrust of the story is that McCain is trying to run a protection racket and use that to take over the town. Thomas Morgan gets killed because he doesn’t really want to be part of it but despite all of his talk and implied badassery doesn’t see the threat for what it really is. But into town comes a tougher than tough frontier detective (Andrew W. Walker) does.

The basics of this movie were not bad. It was certainly never going to be anything special but it had the ability to be better than what it is. With some changes to the cast I think could’ve been a minor hit. Those qualities of the tougher than tough individual with a strong moral code standing against an impossible threat are a great basis for a Western. But the lack of skill in the right areas hurts this.

There are themes of personal redemption and doing good but nothing too overt. This is a good versus evil story where the villain completely miscalculates what he is up against. It is massive miscalculation since the unstoppable force for good was going away and they decided to try to kill it. Why?

I like how they trick you into thinking Thomas Morgan was cheating with the prostitute in the scene where she comes to the bar and then flips the script and reveals Morgan was not only helping her day get what amounted to an education but leave the life of a prostitute. Furthermore that script is flipped even more by having the wife aware of this and part of it. But I guess you could not have the hero run off with a hooker not seeking to change by the closing credits.

The Gundown was not unwatchable, but I wasn’t thrilled. It just needed a little something more to get to quality. Not quite up to where it should’ve been.