Synopsis
In 1897, veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund is deep into Mexico where he encounters professional gambler and outlaw Joe Cribbens — a sworn enemy he sent to prison years before. Max is on a mission to find and return Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman, who as the story is told to Max, has been abducted by Buffalo Soldier Elijah Jones. Max is ultimately faced with a showdown to save honor.
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Cast
- Christoph WaltzMax Borlund
- Willem DafoeJoe Cribbens
- Rachel BrosnahanRachel Kidd
- Hamish LinklaterMartin Kidd
- Benjamin BrattTiberio Vargas
- Guy BurnetEnglish Bill
- Brandon ScottElijah Jones
- Scott PeatJack Tyree
- Warren BurkeSergeant Poe
- Luis ChávezEsteban Romero
Recommendations
- 75
RogerEbert.com
This story is bound to lead to several showdowns at once, and the action climax is beautifully orchestrated by Hill: it’s suspenseful, jarring, and never descends to formal cheating of narrative cheapness to give the audience what it wants and deserves. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Although Hill certainly puts in a few sly tips of the hat to canonical and cult favorites and is clearly enjoying exploiting the audience’s expectations of the genre, Dead for a Dollar isn’t an empty nostalgia exercise. Nor is it a revisionist postmodern deconstruction. It’s somewhere between the two, built on a narrative architecture as classical in its vernacular as Doric columns on a bank, but with details that will surely remind audiences of the future that it was made in the 2020s. - 70
Screen Daily
Dead for a Dollar is a revisionist western served up in a traditional twine-tied package. - 67
The Film Stage
Dead for a Dollar is derivative by nature, but not in unpleasing ways. - 67
IndieWire
Despite a hectic list of characters and their grievances, the plot is not tightly constructed and scans, for stretches, like a hang-out movie. - 65
TheWrap
Dead for a Dollar is a proud heir to a longstanding lineage of low-budget westerns. Consider that a feature and a bug. - 58
The Playlist
Dead for a Dollar provides a decently intriguing yarn within the framework of the Western that burrows a few inches below the surface. No one can say Hill didn’t hold up his end of the deal, which may be all that matters to him in the end. - 50
Variety
Hill wants to “do justice” to each of these people, but the result is that Dead for a Dollar doesn’t have a dramatic core. It has actors we like to watch, doing what they do well (like Waltz playing a civilized badass), but it isn’t structured so that any of their fates gets a rise out of us.
