Tag: the American frontier

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The Dead Don’t Hurt — the new Western directed, produced, written, and starring Viggo Mortensen, begins not with a showdown but a mounted knight in armor making his way through a forest. Then the camera cuts away — not to a showdown, but to Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), who is in the process of completing a mass murder in a saloon, then knocks off a slow-on-the-trigger deputy for good measure. These scenes are very much part of the story, and the film dispenses with linear plot in order to create a visual essay on the West, America, and nobility — both in terms of human independence and making spiritual deals with a strange land. (more…)

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I was downtown in Salt Lake City in 2002 to watch the Pioneer Day parade, also known as “Days Of ’47” — as in 1847, of course. I got to see the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ President Gordon B. Hinckley heading up the column. Although my piety leaves much to be desired, that was something else, indeed! (more…)

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

After the climactic gunfight between Frank and Harmonica, the latter and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill. But just outside of the McBain property, Cheyenne falters. Harmonica stops and turns with concern. It turns out that Cheyenne was mortally wounded by Morton. Like Jesus, he has a bleeding wound in his side. This comes as some surprise. He must have been putting up a brave front with Jill. But the surprise comes off as a rather contrived plot twist; one of many. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

I have had a difficult relationship with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Parts of this film are so emotionally powerful as to be almost unendurable. Indeed, before I began work on this review, I had seen Once Upon a Time in the West only one time in full, on a rented VHS tape in the 1990s. I knew it was a great film, so I bought the VHS. But I could not bring myself to watch it again. (more…)

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

See also: “Colonel McCormick,” “America First 1939-1941,” “Wind Down the Empire of Nothing,” & “America’s Endless Wars” (more…)