Pluskylang Great Film overall

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

adonis98-743-186503 When a promised job for Texan Michael fails to materialise in Wyoming, Mike is mistaken by Wayne to be the hit-man he hired to kill his unfaithful wife, Suzanne. Mike takes full advantage of the situation, collects the money and runs. During his getaway, things go wrong, and soon get worse when he runs into the real hit-man, Lyle. Red Rock West really surprised the hell out of me and Nicolas Cage was really great the same goes for J.T. Walsh, Lara Flynn Boyle and Dennis Hopper who i believe did a great job just like he did with Speed and as the film went on we got more character development and more twists and turns now it does have some small issues with a bit of the start it took some time to get into a certain point where we could care about the characters but also the 3rd act became kinda over the top at times but overall great film starring Cage who really stole the show for me.

Blake Peterson Small towns in the middle of nowhere are made for the movies. To onlookers, a city like Red Rock would be a quaint checkpoint under the umbrella of a long-winded road trip, perfect for a pit stop and a quick bite to eat. Stay there too long, though, and you'll find yourself desperate for entertainment, money, love, and more. Maybe that's why the characters in Red Rock West are so cold-blooded.When the film was first introduced to audiences during the Toronto Film Festival in 1993, it was immediately well-received, a neo-noir praised for its uncommon quality. Distributors weren't as smitten. When its domestic rights were sold to Columbia Tri-Star, a theatrical release was out of the question. "The film doesn't fall neatly into any marketable category. A western film noir isn't something people can immediately spark to," the head of the marketing department of Polygram declared. So it was disregarded, branded as a cable and direct-to-video product. It was shown on HBO seven times in the fall, but the small-screen, after all, is certainly not a distinguished place for a movie to be shown, especially one that should be taken seriously.But just as things could not have gotten any worse, they suddenly became better: When Bill Banning, the owner of San Francisco's famous Roxie Cinema, saw Red Rock West for the first time, he disagreed with the distribution it was receiving. Surely, the film had an audience. And after a year of trying to secure the rights, his faith in the film paid off; it became such a box-office smash at the Roxie that it eventually was given a proper limited release, becoming an art-house favorite within a few weeks.Normally, I wouldn't go so deeply into the backstory of a film that came out more than 20 years ago, but as of 2015, Red Rock West still feels like a classic waiting in the wings, desperately wanting to be discovered by another Banning. Even after all the ruckus it made throughout 1993- 1994, it remains a hidden gem, deserving to sit on the same golden throne that Blood Simple currently lounges on.A drifter in the same caliber as John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Michael Williams (Nicolas Cage) finds himself in the city of Red Rock after failing to acquire a promising oilfield job. When he stops by a local bar to wash away his sorrows, he is confronted by the owner, Wayne Brown (J.T. Walsh), who mistakes him for a hit-man he hired to kill his wife, Suzanne (Lara Flynn Boyle). Michael is young and stupid, so when Wayne offers him an eye-grabbing stack of cash, he fails to correct him that he's actually Michael Williams from the Navy, not Lyle from Dallas.Being the nice guy that he is, he breaks into the Brown home, hoping to warn Suzanne that she's in grave danger. But when the real hit-man (Dennis Hopper) shows up, Michael finds himself tangled in a net of lust and sin that can only end badly. And it surely doesn't help when he becomes romantically involved with Suzanne.In the ashen throes of the film noir genre, there is almost always a recurring feeling of déjà vu; once you've seen a disciple with a drifter, a femme fatale, and a shady husband mixing it up, you've probably seen them all. Film noir has hardly changed since its peak years (the 1940s and '50s), yet it has maintained a startling freshness in the same way comic books have. You may have experienced every storyline possible, but the way those story lines are told, with hard-bitten cynicism and dark alleyway peril, have infinite allure.Red Rock West is a consistent delicacy, a greatest hits album of film noir adventures. Look at the way a cigarette dangles on Lara Flynn Boyle's kissable lips. Look at the way Dennis Hopper handles his gun, like a detective flying off-the-rails of his sanity. John Dahl is a director who knows his movies — after only a few minutes into the film do you get the sense that Murder, My Sweet and Raw Deal are not just B- movies to him, but cookbooks, its recipes lingering in the cinematography and the writing.Red Rock West isn't without its issues: Music plays when a scene should be strictly silent, destroying any tension waiting to be had, and it would have been interesting if the film had explored Michael and Suzanne's relationship as thickly as Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson's. But two minor flaws can hardly deter the success of a film as striking as Red Rock West. Ignoring the disconcerting violence that plagued the majority of '90s independent neo-noirs, the film is deliciously old-fashioned and deliciously stylish.

chris This is a movie that had slipped under my radar until this evening. Watched it pretty late at night and would recommend that as the best time to take it in. It is far fetched and a little cringe worthy in rare moments,but overall it keeps you gripped for the entirety of the movie. Acting all round is good. Dennis Hopper is fantastic - worth watching the entire movie just to see him in the car scene. Only a true maniac could act like that much of a maniac. J T Walsh was also believably sinister. I just found it enjoyable to watch overall - mostly for the little things - moments of acting brilliance and interesting shots and settings. It's kind of hard to describe but even for such a fast paced plot with so many twists and turns - the overall feel of the movie had a comforting quality about it and was vaguely reminiscent of Breakdown. Definitely worth a watch.

MisterWhiplash John Dahl knows his film-noir, and he knows his westerns. This should be assumed from seeing Red Rock West, though his 'noir' influence comes through in other films as well (Kill Me Again and to a degree Joy Ride). He knows how to write a lone average-Joe type of character, and the shady villain, and a sexy Femme Fatale. He knows this, but he also fills his story of a drifter coming to a small Wyoming town and being (accidentally?) hired to kill a man's wife with some top-shelf talent. Or, at least, the best actors that could make the parts their own.It's a cold little movie where you realize pretty quickly that despite Michael's "nice-guy" quality, he's still a potential thief and is the comparatively not so bad. Not so bad compared to Wayne the "bartender" or "Sheriff", if that is indeed his name, and his wife who wants to escape to Mexico with all of the money she "inherited" (please note the quotations). An extra slice of danger comes with the appearance of the actual man hired to kill the woman, Lyle from Dallas played by the late Dennis Hopper. His character and performance is far less aggressive than in Blue Velvet, though this is like comparing a Tasmanian Devil to a bull at a fight.I liked the suspense, of not knowing who might double-cross who next or where the story might go depending on who is alive, and I also liked that they gave each character something to them. Michael and Lyle meet up the first time under unusual circumstances and he gives Michael a ride, where they each find out they were marines, Michael formerly a fighter in a botched mission in Lebanon. This is mentioned about halfway into the film, but it helps to set up this guy as a somewhat tragic figure, without a home and without a job but all of those memories he'd rather not take with him. Certainly not to Mexico, where he has nice ones with his father.Again, the casting and the writing is what makes the film. Lara Flynn Boyle works just about perfect as the female figure of desire and greed, and even if we've seen something like her before she's still fresh because of her performance. JT Walsh is also good but in a different way, where he's a lot more careful with his words, but one can see the look of panic when it surely comes. And Nicolas Cage, at first seemingly a little bored with the part in the opening scenes, really makes it his own as a reluctant hero with nothing to lose. Dialog is used in the film only so much to keep things moving along, but I mean this as a compliment; it's not minimalism, but economy of speech if that makes sense. Dahl knows exactly what he wants in his B-movie premise, and it's like he's taken material sitting on a shelf for years and dusted it and made it vital again.