Post by FilmFlaneur on Mar 7, 2018 15:03:14 GMT
Cult director Alex Cox has a special relationship with westerns, with an affinity for those of the spaghetti variety :
www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/Alex_Cox%27s_Top_20_Favourite_Spaghetti_Westerns
- and so it is no surprise that he has helmed some himself, as well as writing on the genre as an astute and sympathetic critic. Some will remember his Searchers 2.0 from a few years back or the earlier Straight to Hell and, from thirty years ago, perhaps still his best exercise in the genre: Walker (1987). His most recent offering is a mash-up between a staple event for the genre, the OK Coral gunfight, with a nod to the formalities of Kurosawa's masterpiece a work which so famously explored the vagaries of testimony and the nature of truth. (There was a more straightforward reworking of Rashomon in 1964 with The Outrage.) The concept is certainly a bold one and a genre fan might be expected to approach the prospect with interest. How disappointing it is then to report that the result is, generally speaking, a failure; hampered by low budgets, acting and, it must be said, issues with script and directing.
Tombstone-Rashomon more or less does what it does on the tin: re-examines the famous gunfight in retrospect from several overlapping and sometimes competing viewpoints. Problems begin at once with the decision to introduce modern elements into the narrative which needlessly complicates matters to no real gain. Things would have worked well enough structured as a series of straightforward nineteenth century interviews and recollections, without any need for a modern camera crew and the appearance of cars etc. But there they are, and ultimately just prove a distraction, and lending the impression of things being half-baked. The acting is variable if generally adequate, and as Cox's film opens at least, the novelty of the concept does carry the dubious viewer along a way. But by the end the feeling is of another misfire by this variable director, and just makes one want to reach for either the Kurosawa or Sturges classics for a dose of the real stuff, which is a shame.