Before I get to my review of the movie, I need to mention a few things. First, I am not a professional movie critic nor do I play one on T.V. Second, I was not a Theatre major in college. Third, these are my thoughts of this movie not the staff or management of CAS City.
This movie’s timeframe is just after the American Civil War. So, I was looking at the authenticity of clothing, firearms, etc. As far as I could see, the firearms were authentic for the time-period. There were caplock rifles, Henry rifles, Colt’s percussion pistols, and Remington percussion pistols. As for clothing, there was authentic clothing and non-authentic clothing. For instance, the heroine’s father was pretty much dressed authentically. But, one guy was wearing black modern jeans. There were shirts and blouses that were not buttoned all the way to the top. This was not an acceptable practice of the time-period. There were hats that were not authentic. On the website, it states, “…Hell To Pay delightfully revives the great B Movie Western…” The problem I see is the director couldn’t decide if he was making a B Western or a more authentic movie like “Last Stand at Saber River”, “Crossfire Trail”, “Monte Walsh”, etc. Also, I saw a glaring mistake, as far as I could tell, the “piano” player in the saloon was actually playing an organ with piano music coming from it.
As for the acting in the movie, I will try to put it nicely; some people shouldn’t try to act before a camera. The well known actors did a pretty good job as did some of the “newcomers”, but some people obviously had no acting training. The director should have done a better job at coaching the non-professional actors so it didn’t look like a Middle School play. I feel sorry for the good actors that were a part of the production because this will not help their careers.
Some of the scenes were filmed poorly. One scene was of people in a buckboard. The camera was somewhat facing the sun and sunbursts appear on the screen. In another scene when the heroine is running down the boardwalk, the screen has a yellow tint. During one of the gun-fight scenes, the camera panned back and forth quickly between the combatants, which was irritating.
The music in the movie did not add to it. It actually was irritating, because for most of the movie it didn’t stop. In some parts it was hard to hear the dialogue. It was just background noise.
One more thing, on one or maybe two occasions, it shows the deliberate shooting of a woman. This was very disturbing to my wife and me. I understand that the director was trying to convince the audience to the shooter was a despicable man, but that was over the line.
I think someone tried to make a fun movie, but they sorely missed the mark.
BTW, this was not the director’s first project. Here’s a link to his projects.
http://imdb.com/name/nm0570730/Slim
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