Gunfight at Dry River

• Directed by Daniel Simpson
• September 10, 2021 (US)

In 1888 a man enters the town of Dry River-a community ravaged by drought-to reclaim his family legacy only to find the community has been taken over by a family looking for a fabled golden statue.

There is plenty in Gunfight at Dry River for a downbeat yet interesting Western. An isolated community racked by desperation while under the thumb of a crazed family looking for a gold statue with enough worth that it could solve anybody’s problem. Sounds like a good idea for any story set anywhere. And it somewhat is but it’s one that gets hampered in the execution.

The first strike against this is that the lead actor is flat. Joshua Dickinson as Alonzo Murrieta is a little on the table read side in his delivery. And when it comes to the action scenes or anything physical it is difficult to believe this slightly built gentleman could be capable of such. My 11 year old daughter looks tougher built than him.

Yet once I got 10 or 15 minutes in I found myself willing to watch as the story and some of the performances held my attention. The presentation is hampered by the camera being a little static and not in the good George Miller style. It looks like they popped it on the tripod and felt that was all that was needed. Framing the action is great. Low effort in that framing is not.

The town of Dry River is controlled by a crazy woman and her kids. She’s looking for a golden statue buried somewhere in the area and she’s a bit of a religious nut having previously been implied to be a prostitute. She has been abused and so forth but had a vision and is now using her family to brutally enact that vision of establishing a peaceful new settlement. Her kids are not insufferably stupid but they are not the brightest. They just happen to be brutal.

This has some heavy religious elements to it but is not overly religious. With a story centering around finding a gold icon and the dying land you can draw parallels that the drought is punishment for sin coming into the land. Once the sin is expelled at the end rain with the implication of bounty returns. There is no mythmaking in this. It’s just about tough people in tough times facing off against the deranged. They have to stand up and take back their lives from others.

Some abandon place out in the middle of nowhere clearly stands in for a dying settlement. And it generally works. Unlike some lower budgeted Westerns, I didn’t see modern glass or modern door frames or poorly hidden light fixtures. There was care put into this production in that area.

The climactic action scene was good. It was brutal and violent and actually well-choreographed in a film that wasn’t all about action. Plus rather than coming off as adding some razzle dazzle to things it felt like a culmination of events. It was the only thing that could happen. This is where they put the money in but not so much that it felt incongruous to the rest.

Gunfight at Dry River was a pleasant surprise. And truthfully I could see myself watching this down the road. Maybe not for Western fans but it is for those who like drama. Worth a watch!