Red Rock West (1993)

*contains implicit spoilers*
 
Second viewing; first seen on February 13, 1994.

A penniless ex-military is looking for a job in a small town and comes across a risky way of getting rich when he is mistaken for a hired killer.

Neo-noir which at face level simply reworks a known formula. An alternative and admittedly wilder take on it might place it as a radical reworking of The Mechanic (1972). Whereas in that movie we see a young man going through the explicit apprenticeship process as a contract killer, here this process is subconscious and involuntary, and its very existence may be put into question depending on how one construes the film and its ending, and speculates about what follows it. The fact that both the 'Lyle' character and the protagonist are ex-marines is a hint that their interaction should entail consequences on the latter character that the film never openly shows. Furthermore, the structure of the film consists of constrasting a moral person with an immoral environment. After being exposed to Greed as personified in the corrupt sheriff and his wife, the hit man may have come off as a relatively more honest human being. At any rate, this is a very entertaining film which never lets the viewer down.

Rating: 71 (up from 69)