[TrueFaith77]

55.Dead for a Dollar (Walter Hill); grade: A

Finally! A real movie! The great Walter Hill returns cinema to American movies by also returning to its foundational genre, the Western. Doing so, Hill clarifies contemporary socio-political quandaries with concrete forms of morality. Moral action drives the plot, fulfills the characters, burnishes the images, and provides rhythm to the editing. One character quotes Marlowe—“Is this ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’?”—to explain the reason for the rescue mission of a married white woman (Rachel Brosnahan) presumably by a black deserter from the army (Brandon Scott) that goes from New Mexico (and Texas) to Mexico, but it also signifies the mythic nature of the story that leads to an irrevocable confrontation between ancient foes (convict Willem Dafoe and bounty hunter Christoph Waltz). It’s an American myth brimming with American tensions and dynamics, and characters who cross a porous moral border only to be defined by the hard line of truth. When his partner, a black solider (Warren S.L. Burke, conveying conflicting loyalties) asks about his nationality, Waltz answers with a Germanic accent: “I’m an American.” Every character gets the chance to state his or her position—but differences get settled (like a fair and honest election) by persuasion (Brosnahan appealing to Waltz’s essential goodness) or quick-draw contests. When Burke challenges a racist to a bullwhip duel, the whip-snaps crack like gunshots. Lloyd Ahern’s vivid lighting in sepia tone—providing delicate shading across a spectrum of skin tones—provides a sense of place (the harsh sunlight of the desert) and the perceptual reality of America’s collective unconscious like faded photographs (flashbacks are in dreamlike black-and-white). Similarly, the town names that flash on screen provide direction like a spiritual compass (Pueblo de Guadalupe, Ciudad Trinidad Maria). Ideas burst through the screen a la the patented Hill image of a horse careening through a proscenium-like window (it remains as thrilling as ever!). The abstract, cubistic editing of Hill’s Streets of Fire, The Driver, and The Long Riders matures into the metaphysical legibility of Bullet to the Head and, now, Dead for a Dollar. When one character kills someone for the first time, Hill establishes the spatial context and moral necessity by cutting to a distant character’s reaction—yelling, “Dios!”—before cutting back to show the character on the bullet's receiving end dropping dead. The title cards at the end explain the fates of the characters who survive the final shootout—a character-testing “humdinger!” exclaimed one Hill afficionado on Twitter. It appropriates the true-story trope to convey beneficent faith. It’s the best American film of the year. Viva Walter Hill!