Dead For A Dollar

Bounty hunter Max Borlund heads deep into Mexican territory to find and return a woman named Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman. After learning that she has actually fled from the abusive marriage, Max faces a choice: finish the job he's been hired to do, or face down not just the aggrieved businessman, and his Mexican mercenaries, but a deadly hired gunman too--a longtime rival with a vendetta—who are all coming to finish both him, and the job.

Writer/Director Walter Hill (The Warriors, Streets of Fire, The Driver, The Long Riders, 48 hours) dedicates his latest film to Budd Boetticher, a king of 1950’s “B” Westerns, who once described his own films as: “A man has a job to do, or a couple of men do. They try to do it against tremendous odds. They do it.” What more could you want in a Western?

So it’s very fitting that Hill would acknowledge Boetticher for this film, as the plot is straight out of his point of view.

Dead for a Dollar is a classic western in all the good ways, with all the shootouts and hard riding you want, as well as a long slow buildup to the big cacophony at the end. To be clear though, this is 100% a solid B film, from an undisputed master of B films, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything more. Like Boetticher said: “Some men have a job, and they do it.” That’s the basic plot of this film. The result might not be The Long Riders, but it’s still a pretty damn good time.

In a nutshell, if you’re jonesing for a classic Western… here ya’ go.

Also, and this should surprise no one, but Christoph Waltz and Willem Dafoe are fantastic together. The two of them need to get together and do an outlaw cowboy Butch and Sundance type film.