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I
love westerns.
I
was raised on John Ford, and The Duke was my childhood
hero. While Westerns dominated the screen when my parents
were children, this classic genre has been in the decline
since The Man With No Name rode off into the sunset for
the last time. And because of this, the Westerns that
are made today aren't usually up to par with the old classics.
Because of this, I was initially skeptical of The Wooden
Gun; however, I was very pleasantly surprised.
The
Wooden Gun tells the story of cynical gunslinger Jake
Finney (Jon Jacobs), who escapes hanging by carving a
wooden gun. Joined by a naïve young thief in Steve
West (Michael Kastebaum), Jake heads for Canada to escape
the vengeful Sheriff (Stephen Polk) who first caught him.
On the way to Canada, Steve is wounded by a posse and
falls in love with the woman who nursed him back to health
(Dawn Kapatos). When the Sheriff catches Steve and prepares
to hang him, Jake throws caution to the wind and rides
into town to save his friend.
Content
The
opening scene was amazing; it really set the tone for
the whole film. It shows a tearful Steve West talking
to Jake about how he's going to be hung before he ever
got a chance to fall in love. The "repentant antihero"
theme is an element of the newer western; it's seen in
Unforgiven, Hang 'Em High, and in both of the Young
Guns movies. This adds a great emotional element to
the character that is sometimes lacking in the old-school
western.
Another
great element to the story is Jake's British accent. Other
than Indians and Mexicans, one usually doesn't see characters
with accents in old school westerns. This is actually
rather strange considering that the Old West was the most
diverse in all the Americas - in fact, the majority of
cowboys were black, not white.
Despite
the strength of the overall content, however, there were
some situations where not enough information was shown
to the audience. For example, one thing that confused
me was when Steve makes an escape attempt and the Sheriff
brings Steve back lying over the back of his horse. I
initially thought that he was dead, since that's traditionally
the way that people in westerns carried dead bodies. There
was no indication that he was still alive until the next
day when they continued riding with Steve in saddle, since
the Sheriff had simply tossed his body off the horse the
night before. Also, it wasn't made clear that the Sheriff
had brought back Steve's horse, yet Steve was shown riding
it the next day. A good way to have made this clearer
to the audience would to have had the Sheriff either strap
Steve to the back of his horse and bring him back that
way (a la The Good The Bad and The Ugly),
or tie a rope around his neck or wrists and drag him back,
leading the horse, (a la Young Guns II). And this
particular Sheriff seems to have enough of a cruel streak
to do either. In any case, since either of these options
would be difficult to re-shoot, it might be more advantageous
to just re-edit the scene to include a close-up shot of
Steve lying on the ground gasping for air after being
presumably badly beaten by the Sheriff.
The
film opens with a captured Jake Finney and Steve West
being guarded by a posse made up of the Sheriff and two
other men. It's not explained clearly how the two of them
were caught - what matters is that when they reach their
destination they will both be hung. While Steve makes
two daring and stupid escape attempts, Jake seems to have
quietly accepted his fate. During daylight hours, he carves
a wooden horse which he promises to give to Boyd, one
of the members of the posse, to give to his son. Once
night falls, however, Jake stealthily carves himself a
wooden gun, and when it is finished, he holds it on the
posse members and makes his escape.
I
wasn't sure how the concept of the wooden gun would play
out - even though the film is shot in black and white,
one would assume that the members of the posse would be
able to tell the difference between a real gun and a fake
one. However, because Jake made his escape during the
night, the man he held the gun on wasn't able to see it
very well. In fact, had the audience not been shown a
previous shot of Jake carving the gun, one would have
assumed that he was holding a real gun. With the advent
of the antihero, there have been numerous clever escape
scenes, since the protagonist is often in someone's custody.
Sometimes these scenes get a little corny, but The
Wooden Gun did this particular scene very well. It
was especially sad when Jake had to shoot Boyd - the one
member of the posse who had been sympathetic to his plight
- yet another emotional element to the cynical antihero.
Another great element to the escape scene was that, while
Jake was trying to quietly secure a horse and leave, Steve
continued to beg Jake to take him along, calling attention
to the escape and waking the other men, whom Jake then
has to kill.
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