Storyline
In 1897, veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund is deep into Mexico where he encounters professional gambler and outlaw Joe Cribbens — a sworn enemy he sent to prison years before. Max is on a mission to find and return Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman, who as the story is told to Max, has been abducted by Buffalo Soldier Elijah Jones. Max is ultimately faced with a showdown to save honor.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Christoph Waltz, Scott Peat, Willem Dafoe, Benjamin Bratt, Shawn-Caulin Young, Hamish Linklater, Luis Chávez, Rachel Brosnahan, Brandon Scott, Vic Browder, J.D. Garfield, Jackamoe Buzzell, Herman Johansen, Guy Burnet, Gonzalo Robles, Diane Villegas, Alfredo Quiroz, Diana Navarrete, Rocko Reyes, Ivan Lee Holmes, Warren Burke, Gabriela Alicia Ortega, Doug Montoya, Fidel Gomez, Otgadahe Whitman-Fox
Trailer
Reviews
80
It’s solidly and proudly a B picture, as the Boetticher dedication makes clear. But in an age of blockbuster bloat and streaming cynicism, a solid B movie — efficiently shot (by Lloyd Ahern II) and effectively acted (by everyone) is something of a miracle. Hill had a job to do. He did it. That’s worth something.
75
This story is bound to lead to several showdowns at once, and the action climax is beautifully orchestrated by Hill: it’s suspenseful, jarring, and never descends to formal cheating of narrative cheapness to give the audience what it wants and deserves.
70
Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s.
70
Dead for a Dollar is a revisionist western served up in a traditional twine-tied package.
67
Dead for a Dollar is derivative by nature, but not in unpleasing ways.
