Release Year: 2012
Director: Terry Miles
Writer: Joseph Nasser
Studio: Nasser Entertainment
Rating: R
Runtime: 94 minutes
Setting: The Dakotas,
Wyoming
What It's About
In the early 1880s, on-the-run ex-lawman "Cincinnati" John Mason (
Christian Slater) returns to his home town of Promise, Wyoming, where he patches up his relationship with his father (
Ken Yanko) and befriends Pony Express clerk Ben McClure (
Ben Cotton). John's sanctuary is soon shattered when masked bandits wound him and murder his father during an attempted robbery of the Express station. Nursed back to health by childhood friend Alice Gordon (
Jill Hennessy), John sets out on a quest for vengeance that will pit him against not only the masked gang (led by Alice's brother Rudd [
Lochlyn Munro]), but also force him to outwit an Eastern bounty hunter (
Donald Sutherland) as he navigates a love triangle between himself, Alice, and Ben.
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| Christian Slater as John Mason in Dawn Rider (2012) |
If that seems like a complicated, tantalizing plot, just keep two facts in mind. First,
Dawn Rider is a remake of
The Dawn Rider (1935), an early
John Wayne B-Western that clocked in at just 51 minutes. Most importantly, the 2012 iteration of the story was written by the same individual credited with delivering the scripts for
Anna Nicole (2007) and
Paparazzi Princess: The Paris Hilton Story (2008). To be fair,
Joseph Nasser has had a hand in writing and producing several action films to go along with his "omg!"-oriented screenplays, so the end result here isn't nearly as bad as it sounds on the surface. Still, it falls short of tapping in to the potential edge-of-the-seat tension of the story.
Filmed digitally, the cinematography of
Dawn Rider is at times quite beautiful. The rugged charm of British Columbia in autumn is used expertly to provide atmosphere as well as a backdrop for the unfolding story. Add to that a convincing array of clothing and accoutrements (costumer
Zohra Shahalimi won a
Leo Award for Best Costume Design), and the visual presentation of the film stands out as a highlight.
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| Jill Hennessy as Alice Gordon in Dawn Rider (2012) |
The casting was, for the most part, appropriately done with none more so than that of Jill Hennessy as the female lead. Not only does the wiry veteran actress have a look that is perfectly suited to a role in Western films, but Hennessy convincingly portrays the sort of rough-around-the-edges woman that would have been commonplace during that time period. It's surprising to me, then, that
Dawn Rider is her first genre appearance.
Christian Slater has largely been relegated to the world of B-rate thrillers and action flicks since his heyday in the very early '90s (which included his only previous Western film,
Young Guns II). While there's been no shortage of work coming his way, I suspect that his rather limited arsenal of personae will ultimately keep him tied to movies such as these. Some say that if you've seen one Christian Slater movie, you've seen them all, and this holds mostly true for
Dawn Rider as well. Be that as it may, I was pleased with Slater's handling of the emotional roller-coaster that John Mason was subjected to.
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| Donald Sutherland as Cochrane in Dawn Rider (2012) |
I've always been a fan of Donald Sutherland's ability to emulate, with perfection, the creepy/crazy nature that dominates most of the characters that he's called upon to portray. When it comes to insanity, Sutherland is an artist. In
Dawn Rider, however, Sutherland's bounty hunter character Cochrane isn't so much crazy as he is eccentric... and creepy. With a professed disdain for "the West", Cochrane relentlessly pursues his quarry - though his not a man without reason. Even though this was an ancillary role, Sutherland's presence when on screen is a boon to the overall quality of the film.
Sticking with the casting of
Dawn Rider, perhaps the most head-scratching choice was that of Lochlyn Munro as outlaw leader Rudd Gordon. I get that he's Canadian, and that this
is a Canadian film, but he will be forever (in my mind, anyway) Craig from
A Night at the Roxbury (1998). Sure, he's starred in a gaggle of films before and after that slice of comedy gold (including two Westerns), but his goofier roles have tainted his ability to convince me that he's a ruthless bad ass. Sorry Lochlyn, but it is what it is.
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Lochlyn Munro as Craig Rudd Gordon in Dawn Rider (2012) |
As I mentioned earlier,
Dawn Rider's Achilles' heel is the handling of the story by writer Joseph Nasser. The plot is sound, with plenty of opportunity for mystery, suspense, and action, but there's an overall rushed quality to the pacing that thwarts much of the film's potential. The anachronistic script, which is over-reliant on the f-bomb (even from Hennessy's character), helps keep viewers from becoming fully immersed in the story. I'm no fucking prude, of course, but I like my Western dialogue to be a bit more reflective of historical norms. Some of the blame for the uneven story deserves to be placed at the feet of director
Terry Miles, however, given that episodes of disjointed scenes and roughshod editing mar the flow of the film.
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| As steamy as it gets |
Westerns, almost as a rule, bring with them several genre clichés that one just expects to see from time to time. Hopefully as an ode to the original story, Nasser gives us a black-hatted villain and a hero mounted upon a white horse. Excusable in a good film, these elements become a little trite in films that otherwise struggle.
Although there's plenty of lead slinging going on, and death and injury are central plot devices,
Dawn Rider is not a particularly bloody or violent film. In fact, the "bloodshed" itself would warrant at worse a PG-13 rating. So instead of focusing on the horrific nature of gunshot wounds, Miles give us a slightly sanitized view suitable for even the most squeamish of Western fans.
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| Busted! |
Despite its flaws, which are really quite minor compared to some low- and moderate-budget Westerns that have been released recently,
Dawn Rider is a mostly enjoyable genre film that touches on nearly everything we've come to expect from a Western. I would have liked the story to have been handled more deftly, with John Mason's passed explored a bit more in depth, but on the other side of the coin there's plenty of material for a future rewrite.
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