The Last Rites of Ransom Pride

Tiller Russell writes and directs this strange, but somewhat interesting western. Ransom Pride(Scott Speedman)in many ways is a man's man, in spite of being a criminal and gunfighter. This realistic and rather raw drama finds Ransom gunned down in Mexico and his partner Juliette Flowers(Lizzy Caplan)vows to keep the promise to her lover and take him back home to Glory, Texas to be buried next to his mother. One major problem is that Ransom's body is being held ransom by a mysterious woman, Bruja(Cote de Pablo); she wants Flowers dead. The Reverend Early Pride(Dwight Yoakam)wants his son's body brought back from Mexico as much as he too wants Miss Flowers dead. Flowers, not shy to stab, slice or shoot, decides to deceive Ransom's little brother, Champ(Jon Foster), in helping her bring back his brother's body. All along Flowers knows that she is actually trading Champ for Ransom; a live brother for a very dead one. Between Glory and Mexico there will be hell to pay. How in the world they got Calgary, Alberta, Canada to look like Texas and Mexico is one of those magical things we go to the movies for...I guess. This flick does not go easy on the bloodshed and brutal violence. My main reason for viewing this movie is Miss Cote de Pablo, who you really have to look twice to recognize. Her character looks nothing like the beautiful NCIS agent she played on TV. Others in the cast: Kris Kristofferson, W. Earl Brown, Jason Priestley, Peter Dinklage and Blu Mankuma.

Pseudo-voodoo/mock-shamanic mextern. Vapid females of reproductive age, moronic male models, fourth-rate actors, celebrity sellouts, cynical producers, lazy writers, inebriate (?) directors and journeymen technicians - this film has it all. Utter crap from beginning to end. What was anyone thinking of ? Surely not the money.

More a short film than an actual film, "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride" tries to distinguish itself as a Western that seems to challenge just about every convention that Westerns used to stand for. The question is, is that really a good idea? The plot, in a nutshell, is as follows: a woman (Juliette Flowers) is trying to recover the body of her deceased lover (Ransom Pride) from a malformed mystic, who will turn the body over, as long as she gets in return the brother (Champ Pride) of the deceased lover. We really don't know why Champ is important to the mystic...or even why she's holding the body of Ransom Pride in the first place...although we are given a rather difficult to follow explanation in the end if you make it that far. If anything, the explanation makes events that happen in the film seem even more unusual! Just as unusual is the idea that Champ's Father Early (Dwight Yoakam) hates Champ for what happened to his wife, who died when Champ was born. In fact, he makes a pilgrimage to recover both Champ AND Ransom's body from the mystic...after he discovered that Juliette was planning on trading Champ for Ransom's body. Naturally he holds a grudge against Juliette, who he blames for Ransom's death, and suckering Champ into servitude, so he plans to kill her...until he is shot dead...by Champ! This film is plagued by several factors, among them: Unusual action edits which, after an action scene takes place, are for some reason reversed and choppy. A strange assortment of characters, including the mystic (who looks more like a Voodoo practitioner than a Native American or Mexican priestess), a little person, a drunken black veteran of the Civil War (I think) and pot smoking siamese twins. Other scenes, which don't seem to make any sense at all, except if you consider them in the film to expand on the running time. I'd put the running time of the film officially at around 80 minutes...but if you were to trim out the scenes that make no sense and those strange rewinding segments, I suspect you'd cut that down to between 50-60 minutes! Jon Foster is absolutely gorgeous in the film...and Scott Speedman and Lizzy Caplan aren't terrible to look at. It's just a little eye candy, but it's no where near enough to save THIS film!

So you want to make a western, but not just a western. Nooooo. This is gonna be a Work of art too. So we add some weird color scheme and a lot of fixed camera settings on plants and desolate landscapes. Some strange music on top and let the plot unfurl really slooow. Now this takes the western up to art level, right? WRONG!! This is the recipe for a bad movie. Same thing happened for the french adaption of the comic Blueberry. What you get is a pretentious nothing. There have been several westerns deserving the art stamp. (The Searchers, The good bad & ugly, The unforgiven, to name a few), but these always worked within the boundaries of how a western should be, namely entertaining. This one definitely doesn't fit the bill.

Another in a long line of pretentious Canadian films. Too often, I see Canadian film makers who think they have to display all manner of pseudo-intellectual, artsy nonsense in order to convince the viewer that the Canadian movie experience is more cerebral and enlightening than those gauche, low-brow US movies. Harumph! And yet they borrow every US-based visual trick to make their films. The result is a lurching Frankenstein monster that sends me running for my torch light and pointed stick. This movie is visually ugly, with jerky cutaway shots that make me think they are trying to do a style job a la Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." Coppola shows us how it's done when done well; sorry guys, but you show us what it looks like when done badly. This could have been a beautiful, interesting Western if they'd have stuck to some of the more traditional elements of the genre. I'm thinking something along the lines of "The Assassination of Jesse James..." Obviously, they didn't have a Brad Pitt budget, but my opinion is that they wasted too much cash on the unnecessary visual junk. And speaking of cash, I imagine the constraints of Canadian government funding also put the strangle-hold on their efforts. There is little funding to be had for Canadian art unless it screams pretentiousness and faked intellectualism. You want to know something? When I watched this one on Netflix, I never knew it was Canadian by its description. It was listed as a Western and I love Westerns, so I picked it out. Two minutes into it, I had it pegged as a Canadian film. Go figure. And in case you're wondering, I am Canadian, myself, and I do like some Canadian flicks. "The Saddest Music in the World" is one of my faves. It shows that you can be quirky without being a snob about it. That is a FUN movie, filmed (in an old warehouse in Winnipeg) with Vaseline smeared on the camera lenses. Nothing high-brow or snooty, here, folks! HA HA HA!! Ahem...back to the review. The characters in this one are unpleasant. Dwight Yoakam is fun to watch, but he can't carry such a heavy load on his shoulders alone. I'm not going to lay out the details of bad characters - suffice to say there was no character that I could root for, or get behind, or cheer for! In the long run, I guess it's all about personal taste, so I would never tell a person to pass this one by. The fact that people made this movie (presumably with some enthusiasm) is testimony that SOMEONE out there is interested in this type of thing. But it ain't me, Babe. No, no, no...it ain't-- Well, you get the idea. Be forewarned, is all. It's called a Western, but doesn't feel like one. Not by a long shot. It feels like you're standing in an allegedly upscale museum, where people are expected to praise every splatter and smear simply because they've been told that it's art. I don't consider my tastes to be low-brow. I am fully capable of appreciating cerebral works. Actually, I enjoy movies of all genres. The only thing I ask is that it entertains me. Entertains my eyes, my ears, my imagination. This one did none of those things.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is an old west run and gun action film, with touches of the dramatic, and excellent unintrusive comic relief. The intro belies a highly entertaining film, as the opening credits honestly look like they were made with Windows movie maker, but this is quickly set aside with a sterling intro to the story. Frankly, the casting in this film is beyond genius. There are few large names to guide it, but all of the actors are perfect for their roles. From Lizzy Caplan as the exceptionally attractive lead femme fatale, to Peter Dinklage as the token midget. Blu Mankuma also plays an outstanding character, complete with snappy dialogue and possibly one of the best scenes of dialogue in the film, paired with Peter Dinklage. For some reason he isn't featured in the IMDb cast list, but he plays a prominent role, and is definitely one to watch the film for. But no film can be perfect, and the flaw with this film is purely narrative. Even into the final scene of the film, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the old favourite, the "pre-kill monologue". Almost every kill in this film seems to occur as a result of the person you think will win taking his/her sweet bloody time about it. Now using this once in a film is forgivable, but I lost count after a while. It just seemed no one in this world (despite being hardened killers) could end someone's life without telling them a little about themselves, why they were killing the target, and how they were going to do it. And of course as a result, almost all expected results were reversed. But truth be told, however annoying this came to be, the characters were great, and the overall story arc had a great hook to it. Certainly should you be given the chance to watch this film, take it.

It cost me a dollar to rent this and I have to say it's the worst use I've ever put a dollar to. To think I could have put that as a down payment on a pack of gum or just turned Washington's head into a mushroom. But no, I had to rent the interminable Last Rites of Ransom Pride. It begins with a voice-over telling us of Juliette's(Lizzy Kaplan)sad childhood and how she had to kill an evil general in his sleep. It's not a terribly long opening narration, and then we're hit with the oddly fonted subtitles telling us it's 11 years later, 11 years after she told us the voice-over or the actual events, we can only guess. By the way, the subtitles are very hard to read, which is unfortunate because they're used quite often. Other than the little bit of back story we get, the characters aren't particularly deep. Lizzy Kaplan pretty much keeps one expression on her face for the entire flick and Dwight Yokam calls her * a lot, but that might not have been in the script. Peter Dinklage does as well as he can with the material, but despite this contribution, his character is simply named "Dwarf" in the credits. Don't seem right. A lot of what follows is intermittently plastered with instant replays of previous scenes and "artsy" shaky cam shots of animal skulls and birds that jerk like they're in a Tool video. These don't really add anything to the film and only serve to prolong the misery of watching it. It's not a terribly complicated story either, but Tiller sure takes the scenic route getting us there. It's like he's slowly winding a broken jack in the box. You want the weasel to pop, but you know it never will. If you like westerns I wouldn't suggest seeing this, and if you don't like westerns, I still wouldn't.

"The body of Ransom Pride belongs to me." It didn't take me very long to realize that I wasn't going to enjoy The Last Rites of Ransom Pride. Ten minutes, at most. The whole vibe of the movie just turns me off. I like Lizzy Caplan, but putting one appealing actress in the middle of a disaster doesn't do much good. I disliked the way it was filmed, the dialogue, and the absurd, meandering, nonsensical narrative that served as the story. Basically, Ransom Pride (the man) is a recently dead acquaintance of Juliette Flower (Caplan), and she made a promise to retrieve his body and bury it near his mother. In order to get his body, she has to deliver Ransom's still living younger brother to some seedy folks. Lots of people hate her, lots of people want her dead, and lots of people try to stop her. That's the story. There are lots of unlikeable characters that were utterly ridiculous in their seriousness, the frequent action scenes are terrible, and the entire movie makes little sense. Sounds like a real winner, right? It's rare for me to truly hate a movie, but The Last Rites of Ransom Pride reached that dubious achievement. This is probably in the bottom two or three movies that I've seen this entire year. The only good news is that I (hopefully) don't have to ever watch it again.

Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman) is not the most honest person in the world and gets shot and killed in the first scene. His girlfriend Juliette (Lizzy Caplan) who looks like a post apocalyptic Sgt. Pepper Band member, wants the body to return to his home for a proper burial. For some idiotic reason, the body is being held for ransom. Juliette, known as the wh*** to most, get Ransom's brother to come with her. Champ (Jon Foster) is an expert shot, but is a bit on the shy side. The film incorporates a group of grindhouse characters which include a midget, Siamese twins, a pervert stutterer, and a woman with markings on her face. Guide: F-bomb. Sex. Nudity.

Another reviewer states that no reason was given why the body of Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman) was being held captive by the disfigured bruja (Cote de Pablo). Actually there was. In the narrative, it was mentioned that Ransom killed a priest who was her brother, so she was keeping his corpse in recompense until Ransom's brother could be brought to her for revenge. By the way, 'bruja' means 'witch in Spanish, which goes a long way to explain why de Pablo's character seemed to be mystically inclined. The contrarian in me wants to completely disagree with virtually all the other reviewers here who slam the film as miserably bad. Although I can't go all the way on that, the picture is hampered by a film making style that wants to be stylistically clever, but winds up getting in it's own way very much of the time. The vertigo inducing jump cuts tend to confuse more than clarify, and add no coherence to the story. And when the story introduces characters like the Dwarf (Peter Dinklage) and the drug addled Siamese twins, it feels more like a Western episode of 'Carnivale' than anything else. I think I mentioned it in another review that there must be some unwritten rule somewhere that states that every Country singing star has to appear in at least one Western movie. This time it was Dwight Yoakam's turn, and even though he's fairly competent as the vengeful preacher of the Pride Clan, I can't say that it was an auspicious role. Kris Kristofferson of course has been in more than his share, and I get the feeling that he's offered these roles because he just naturally looks the part of a grizzled old cowboy. It goes without saying, even though almost all the other reviewers said it, that this film won't appeal to everyone. I didn't think it was terrible, but for those of a short attention span, enduring it might invite The Preacher's admonition of knowing the torment of hell.