The Price of Death

• Directed by Chip Baker
• August 4, 2022

A gambler turned bounty hunter transports an outlaw to his hanging while being chased by a murderer and his gang of thieves in search of some hidden money.

The Price of Death looked like a low budget throwback to Westerns from the end of the genre’s heyday and it certainly tried to be just that. It has a dangerous premise with hardened characters if a life-or-death struggle. Despite a great name and a great title all I could do was shrug.

Best way I can put the cast is international. There are French accents and Irish among others. This Old West was populated by a high number of Europeans. I’m not sure about the real West but I would presume that a decent number of immigrants made it out that way based on the potential opportunities. If you’re going to make a dangerous trip across the ocean, then a few hundred miles overland is not that big of a deal. Even so what we get feels, well, off.

This generated the vibe of a pilot for a late 90s TV Western. Was there an unemployed TV sensor on the set with an accompanying script supervisor to give it that aesthetic? The story is executed TV safe despite people getting killed. I cannot put my finger specifically on why or what that is. The direction is very good for a low budget film. And the production values create a convincing atmosphere. These people knew what they were doing there but it’s missing something. Maybe because it’s possibly just checking off the list by going through the motions.

The acting isn’t terrible. Nobody should have won an Oscar for this, but when it comes to the main characters, they don’t phone it in. But I will be darned if it was enough to help me remember much about this movie. It just fit in with dozens of other productions.

This should’ve been good but there is nothing here. It just didn’t connect. I have watched plenty of low budget to no budget Western films and I’ve enjoyed many of them. They needed a little better budget to be something better embraced by the public. This one had everything it needed to be good for what it was. It never reached beyond its grasp financially or story wise. But it just never made it to good.

The Price of Death despite having a great name is not a great movie. It’s not even a good movie, nor is it bad. You won’t hate yourself for having watched it, but it just won’t connect with you enough to you have some kind of memory.