‘Dead for a Dollar’ Film Review: Walter Hill Captures the Best and Worst of Low-Budget Westerns
thewrap.comcan judge a film by its title. Consider “Dead for a Dollar:” It certainly sounds like a Western, doesn’t it? The “dollar” might call to mind some of the classics of the genre, while the “dead” at least promises a few good shoot-outs, a bit of bloody fun.
Only taken together, the name does have a somewhat frictionless quality — “timeless,” if you want to be generous, “generic” if you don’t.
Which makes it so perfectly apt for Walter Hill’s perfectly perfunctory new film.The fact that the filmmaker behind “48 Hrs.” and “The Warriors” will be honored with a career achievement prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival no doubt pushed his latest, low-budget Western towards such a tony debut, while the cast of Willem Dafoe and Christoph Waltz must have clearly sealed the deal.
But for all that, “Dead for a Dollar” is decidedly not prestige fare, and it wears that distinction as a badge of pride.Hill dedicates his latest film to the Michelangelo of the two-bit oater, Budd Boetticher, and one can easily see why.
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