Review of The Last Rites of Ransom Pride

I love the western genre enough that often I can accept a lesser entry of the genre despite its shortcomings. However, in the case of "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride", there are far more shortcomings than good elements. Actually, I can't recall any good elements at all! Though higher budgeted than most other Canadian films, it seems that they blew most of the money on rounding up that cast, since the visual look of the movie is horrible. The movie looks really cheap, due to a combination of threadbare production values and the always unwise decision to wash out any vibrant colors. But what is worse is the direction and the script. The story plays out in a very muddled way, so that despite the core story (sort of) making sense, there are details that are so badly explained (if explained at all) that you'll be scratching your head. And despite a running length of only 82 minutes, the movie plods on at a really slow pace, mainly due to there not being a heck of a lot of plot. Though there are a lot of annoying arty and self conscious moments It's evident that the filmmakers were trying for something different, but ironically they almost certainly would have made a better movie had they tried to be more conventional.