Dead in Tombstone, Between The Crow and Kill Bill. In the Wild West. With Danny Trejo
In the Wild West, a gang robs a small mining town, Edendale. While they celebrate in the local saloon, gang leader Guerrero de la Cruz (Danny Trejo) has a small disagreement with his half-brother Red (Anthony Michael Hall) who, disobeying a direct order, kills the local sheriff in cold blood. Red overreacts and shoots Guerrero. While he’s dying, the boss asks his other men to kill the traitor. Red promises them that, if they won’t, they will rule the town together. The men accept Red’s proposal.
Edendale is renamed Tombstone, and Red, who nominates himself sheriff, rules it like a tyrant, helped by Baptiste (Emil Hostina), Ramos (Ronan Summers), Washington (Radu Micu), Snake (Edward Akrout) and Darko (Ovidiu Niculescu).
After his death, Guerrero is welcomed to Hell by a blacksmith (Mickey Rourke), Lucifer, who starts torturing him. The bandit, however, persuades Lucifer to concede him 24 hours back on Earth: if he manages to kill all six his former accomplices, he’ll live. If he doesn’t, his destiny will be even worse.
Guerrero rises from the grave and starts on his path of revenge. After quickly killing the first of the gang members, he lines six empty coffins in front of the Tombstone church, leaves the corpse of the man in one of them and pins on his chest, with a knife, a page of the Bible with a number one written on it. In blood.
The only help Guerrero gets is from the widow of the Edendale sheriff, Calathea Massey (Dina Meyer). Thankfully, she’s a tough woman and a great shooter. But the agreement Guerrero made with Lucifer states that he must kill the men personally…
Completely shot in Romania and featuring several Romanian actors, this direct-to-DVD action/western is an entertaining flick. The story is not exceptional (and not very original), but the cinematography, by Dutch director Roel Reiné, is excellent, with high quality camera work and beautiful scenery.
Not a masterpiece, then, but definitely a funny movie. Danny Trejo is cast, as usual, as a badass, Mickey Rourke is creepy and luciferine (well, here he actually plays Lucifer), Anthony Michael Hall plays an evil schemer who outsmarts most… a bit obvious, but worth a watch.
