Movie Review: Dead in Tombstone (2013)

The movie stars Danny Trejo, Anthony Michael Hall, Mickey Rourke and Dina Meyer.

My wife and I have a bunch of television shows we really need to get caught up on. However, I was in the mood for a movie and, when I came across this one on Netflix, I thought it looked interesting. And, since my wife is a big Danny Trejo fan, it didn’t take much to convince her to watch it with me. Unfortunately, while there were some things I liked about this movie, the film, in general, didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Trejo, for the record, was surprisingly good as the gunfighter-turned-hero Guerrero De la Cruz and Anthony Michael Hall was believable as his half brother/nemesis, Red. And, while some of the action scenes did cross some believability lines (especially when outlaws would sometimes be launched backwards when they were defeated), I did think they were fun to watch.

Another thing I liked about this movie was the overall premise. The movie had quite a bit of originality to it, something you honestly don’t see much of lately. This did make the film less predictable than I thought it would be.

My biggest complaint about the movie is there are a lot of scenes that seem to drag on a bit in between the action. Those lulls were a little dull and very rarely added any sort of substance to the overall plot.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the ending. Again, I do applaud the writers for not being predictable. However, the surprise twist did end up being a little ridiculous, even for a movie like this (when ridiculous endings are sometimes expected).

I’m also still undecided about Mickey Rourke as Lucifer. It wasn’t that he didn’t do an OK job. I just don’t think he was very convincing in that role, though I’m not sure if that’s because he didn’t look the part or was simply limited by the script (which, admittedly, seemed to get a bit weak by the end of the film).

I thought the overall premise was good and the first-half execution exceeded my expectations. However, something about this movie just seemed to be a bit incomplete and it failed to deliver in the second half, especially at the end. As a result, I ultimately thought it was a better movie than I expected. But, it probably could have used a bit more editing to make it an above-average film.

My Grade: C