Cassidy Red

Cassidy Red

source: Cassidy Red

Cassidy Red (Abby Eiland), who is blonde for 2/3 of the film, is the daughter of a John and a prostitute. She grows up and gets messed up in love making the wrong guy angry. There is s betrayal of trust and blah blah blah...a chick flick that is also a western. A piano player narrates the story. The film was neither a great love story or a great western. Pretty good for a college project. Guide: No swearing, sex. or nudity.

Good acting, good history and good aesthetic. Good lighting, good music, good photography, that's innegable. Only who don´t know nothing can say other thing, or only a hater. Perhaps it is not the best movie in the world, but it has all the ingredients for seeing it and enjoying it.

Surprisingly nice cinematography. I've been going through a lot of the indie films on Prime and this one stood out with its moody lighting, nice sets, competently shot. But by the end I just didn't have that satisfying feeling after watching a revenge style film. The glaring problem for me was the fact that her lover wasn't killed...so theres absolutely no reason to take revenge on this man, well he was locked up by the sheriff, but without his death all the compellingness of the film is just gone for me, I stopped caring, plus the flashback of how their love came about didn't feel real, authentic. I couldn't feel anything in those scenes so that I could get behind the protagonist, then theres the reveal he's not dead......so that's it, I checked out, such a shame. I wanted to like it, I love westerns, but not his one.

It starts with all the wonderful clichés. A person walks into a saloon, face, and other body parts obscured, and talks to the barkeep-voice obscured, too. It's revealed a minute or so later: it's a woman. No duh. The body frame said that much. Then a man walks into the saloon, face also obscured as if both these people warrant such a thing in the beginning of a film with actors/characters no one really has ever heard of or established storywise; especially since it's the beginning of the film. As with so many low budget films: the composition plays over much of the dialogue and turning up the volume doesn't really help. And, if it doesn't have subtitles and you can't read lips...well...kind of makes you want to skip those parts or stop watching all together. The film is setup in story form by way of narration (cliché) where a piano player is telling a story to a woman on a stage; think she's a prostitute, or something...don't really remember. Then in narration over a story told in a sort of flashback it then goes into another flashback telling about the main character and her friend, how they met, who they are to each other, explaining the bad guys etc., and it's all just a really big mess of storytelling. One of the most boring tales of revenge. Personally, I felt the photography and set design was fine. The acting was mildly okay, not the worst I've seen but nothing too special, either. The beginning kind of paints the female lead as a 'bad girl' type but with the implication that she once was a 'good girl'. I didn't see that connection. She was never shown as being a sweet innocent girl who then was turned into a bad girl by the things that she went through in the flashback scenes. She was shown as a strong-willed person who stood up for those she felt was being wronged by others; which is good but there's nothing innocent about that, in my opinion. I felt that the worst thing about the film was the composition. Not that it was awful but for the mere fact it drowns out the dialogue. 40 minutes in the characters Jake (Jason Grasl) and Joe (Abby Eiland) are laying down outside next to a fire having a talk after sex and it's difficult to make out the conversation based on the fact the composition is so loud. Another problem with the composition: it plays through 99% of the entire film and the in between moving-along scenes the composition is quieter but in the scenes where the dialogue is important it's difficult to hear anything but the composition. Overall, it's not the worst Western I've ever scene but it is the most boring and I'm one of the few people who disliked "High Noon" (1952) based on the fact that I found it boring. Also, you notice how some films explain what's going to or did happen before or after a scene? Not this movie. No, for the first time (to my recollection) -- and I've seen thousands of films -- this film explains the plot to the viewer consistently every 10-15 minutes until the very end. The opening credits were pretty good, though. That's something.

A romantic western told in retrospective about young love to be lost. The story isn't much though it's nicely told. If the writing were as good as the pictures and visual telling, the directing, acting, casting, costumes and perhaps above all, the music, this could have been a real pearl. Not a bad try - not at all, and probably perfect for someone in, or who lost their love.

This must be the 10th indie i've seen lately that stinks to high heaven...its not even worth wasting words on...skip it for something, well anything would be better