Dead Man’s Hand

• Directed by Brian Skiba
• July 7, 2023

A gunslinger gives up that life after marrying but after being forced to defend himself he is reluctantly drawn back in.

Dead Man’s Hand introduces most of the important characters in a shootout at the beginning. I appreciate that they largely used blood squibs rather than CGI but the one guy that gets really shot up has a lot of them on himself and you can see it. It’s a direct on shot camera shot that highlights film fakery while also hinting at issues in production.

During some of the gunfights there is the occasional clear addition of CGI. Amongst the blood squibs and genuine smoke is computerized blood splatter and very two-dimensional smoke clouds reminiscent of those added to film before the advent of CGI. When the movie is cheap you should not try bargain basement enhancement. It only highlights issues trying to be concealed.

Occasionally continuity issues creep into this movie. If you pay attention you might notice for example in the opener an issue with the dead bodies. I swear that the one resting on the back of the stagecoach is a much younger man than the one that arrives at town. Did they rotate the corpses on the way?

Much like the issue with the switch in corpses there is some issue during the climactic battle. Not every building has a complete second floor since this is a set and during the final fight there’s a shot which shows the guy shooting from what is implied to be a room on the second floor. When they showing him fall out the window you can see the blue sky in the back along with furniture. 

There are moments of gratuitous nudity. I’m not against film nudity, but I think you can often get away by only alluding to nudity or even gore. Just push it up to the line of very nearly showing. Then again this really plays up the open marriage aspect of Reno (Jack Kilmer) and Vegas (Camille Collard) so I guess they might be aiming for tit-illation.

Colonel Clarence T. Bishop (Stephen Dorff) has taken over a small town by killing the sheriff and the mayor. One would think this occurs at some relatively decent amount of time after the deaths of those two people but when things start to fall apart we eventually see the mayor and the sheriff hanging and they are looking pretty fresh. No signs of decay or animals picking at them. 

Mysticism comes and goes in Dead Man’s Hand as needed. Reno gets both trigger fingers cut off by Bishop and then they’re magically reattached by a Native American shaman. If magic had played a bigger role throughout I’d be a little less bothered by its inclusion but it’s just a way to keep the story going.

Our plot is a Western revenge story but also takes on a light and entertaining feel at times. Mahto (Mo Brings Plenty) is often the wit of the movie. He’d rather be anywhere else, but there with jokes come from that. Reno must save his bride from Bishop and by default free the town from Bishop’s rule.

This movie has its moments, but what brings Dead Man’s Hand down for me is the ultimate conclusion. After all is said and done our hero doesn’t save the girl which was his main thing. He just kills the bad guy and frees the town. Reno saves Vegas from being raped and hanged but she takes a bullet and bleeds out. I would’ve taken it if he had saved her and died, but going through all that effort to it makes events largely pointless. Even returning gold stolen from the local tribe fails since the chief doesn’t care because money is not important.

Dead Man’s Hand is not a bad movie, but it’s a movie that is significantly harmed by the ending. I didn’t hate it, but I would’ve adored it with its technical flaws and all if it had an ending that didn’t make everything the hero went through mostly pointless.