Monday, November 21, 2011

Gunfighter (1998)

Background: The Coppola family is one of the most prolific in the world of cinema. Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most respected directors ever, still making great movies to this day (See Tetro, it's fantastic). His son, Roman did special effects work for his dad's underrated Bram Stoker's Dracula and has directed a bunch of music videos. His sister is Sofia Coppola, who's becoming quite the director in her own right. Francis' sister, Talia Shire is best known as Adrian from the Rocky series and she was also in The Godfather, as Connie. Her son is actor and sometimes drummer Jason Schwartzman, who has done great work in Wes Anderson's movies, among others. And we can't forget Francis' nephew/lunatic Nicolas Coppola, known to you and me as Nicolas Cage. His brother, Christopher is the director of today's movie, Gunfighter. That just about covers it, I think.

The movie stars Robert Carradine, who also comes from a prolific hollywood family. He is the son of John Carradine and half brother of David. At his side is Martin Sheen. Sheen, of course worked with Christopher's uncle Francis on Apocalypse Now where he had a heart attack. He bet big that it was just a fluke thing and not some sort of Coppola Curse that doomed him to suffering bodily harm on ever Coppola movie. Lucky guy. Sheen comes from yet another acting family (I'm getting tired of this) with his sons Charlie Sheen, who has been in the news lately, and Emilio Estevez. Rounding out the family is Martin's brother Joe Estevez, the less said about him the better.

Plot: Robert Carradine plays a country singer who shows up at a dark, dusty bar for a gig. The bar is completely empty though, save for a player piano and Martin Sheen. Sheen is a mysterious bearded stranger with black gloves with a shiny star on them. So shiny in fact that Carradine asks, incredulously, how he got them that way. Turns out the gloves used to belong to the fasted gunslinger in the west. They might have some magical properties that make whoever wears them a better, faster shot, but that's never really elaborated upon. The scenes in this bar between Carradine and Sheen act as a framing device for the real meat of the movie, which is the story of those gloves.

The main story involves two main characters. Hopalong Cassidy (No official word on whether or not this is supposed to be the Hopalong Cassidy or just some weird coincidence) is the infallible hero. He wears a white hat, has a pretty, though weirdly scrawny, horse and wears Martin Sheens' gloves. Tex, however, is the exact opposite. He's sometimes known as The Man In Black, he has a beard and is unmistakably evil. Cassidy humiliated him ages ago in a showdown and all Tex wants is revenge.

Tex learns Cassidy is in town and has ordered some cattle from the Bar 20 ranch. So he burns it down and murders a few of the employees. He also captures a pretty lady. That story plays out exactly how you'd expect without a shred of moral ambiguity, no unforeseen plot complications and very little excitement from the cast or the viewer. By the end, little was explained about the gloves, who Martin Sheen actually was (I think it's implied that he was a ghost?), or where my 90 some minutes went.

Why Was It Fogotten? It becomes painfully clear fairly early that not every Coppola can direct a movie. The acting is awful almost across the board. Sheen and Carradine aren't really in it long enough to make much of a difference. The only other actor of any note is Clu Gulager, a character actor who has appeared in a lot of westerns in the old days. He kept his career going through the 80s by  turning to horror movies. He also doesn't have a lot of time to make an impact. The plot is rote and told completely straight, it sometimes feels like it's supposed to more intentionally cheesy, but that might just be me. It also looks terrible, but now it just feels like I'm piling on.

What Went Right? There's a good idea for a movie in here. Using the framing device of Martin Sheen telling a classic western story with magical twists could have been really neat. Just look at The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. Sure, that was a wildly unpopular show, but it's very well remembered these days for its mixture of western traditions and supernatural craziness. All this movie needed to be tolerable was a tongue in cheek attitude, but this movie just couldn't find it. Okay, this movie probably needed a lot more than that, but that would have been a good start.

Verdict: There are a lot of other Coppolas you should check out first.
Score: 10%

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