Dawn Rider (2012)

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Lately John Wayne films have been getting lots of remakes. Offhand I've seen remakes for Stagecoach, The Alamo, The Sons Of Katie Elder, The Angel And The Badman, True Grit and now a film from his early B western period, Dawn Rider. John Wayne was one of a kind, no one should expect to emulate him. But Christian Slater, you shouldn't have tried.Several of the plot elements are the same and Slater and the rest of the cast use the same character names, but there's no way unless you were a John Wayne fan you could possibly guess this was a remake of one of his films. Slater, a man of some notoriety in the west comes home to visit his father who runs the local Express company office in his town and shortly afterward is there when his father is killed in a robbery attempt. It's a quest for vengeance after that and the killer is closer to him than he thinks.One new element that was introduced was Donald Sutherland as a bounty hunter also after Slater. His character seemed to superfluous in a way. But this remake is certainly not a true remake of the Lone Star western the Duke did in his B western period where the good guys and bad guys were fairly obvious. Then again that western was for the Saturday matinée kid's trade in 1935.Slater is an actor who specializes in quirky and sometime unstable characters. John Wayne's boots were too big to fill.

Having always been a big fan of Westerns I saw this listed and after reading the cast thought it might be an OK watch even though it got a low score on here.Low scores seem to be becoming a standard on here for any movie that doesn't have lots of action and explosions.Christian Slater can be very hit and miss with his movies and Donald Sutherland is getting a bit past it and now only plays bit parts, but I still thought this was worth a watch. I hadn't seen any of Jill Hennessy's work before but after watching this now will be having a look at Jordans Crossing.This follows the tried and true formula of a lot of westerns in the past with man hunts and revenge and a bit of humour thrown in here and there.Without giving the plot away completely a son (Christian Slater) comes home to his home town and his father gets murdered in a robbery. The son get wounded in the robbery as well and is nursed back to health by an old friend (Jill Hennessy), who just happens to be the sister of one of the robbers.The son, is also an ex Pinkerton detective and on the run from a dubious character (Sutherland) and he decides to try to find his fathers killers.Some of the gunfights are a bit farcical and they are not very good shots but overall the movie is quite entertaining and mostly moves at a good pace with a few slow spots. 6/10 for me.

terrible western screenplay with lousy storyline and deadbeat plot, bad directing and bad acting. this western should not be made into production because it's worthless. pretentiously tried very hard to be cool but turned out to be so hollow. first, we got a close up of the guy urinated with a projectile urine line in the very beginning when it showed 'Dakota Territory, 1883", then we heard the title song kept singing in the background, then the song went on vaguely, then when the so-called 'Cincinnati Kid' open the door, the volume of the song suddenly became louder. well, did you see what wrong with such stupid arrangement? no? well, let me to tell you: it's like that there's a phonograph (record player) playing the album inside, the volume was blocked by the door, so when the door was opened, the volume suddenly came out of the opening; such arrangement of directing was just....!@#$! then the guy kept drinking out of a bottle, then three bounty hunters came and sneaked up, two of the low-level no-brains started shoot at the cabin built with lumbers, they shot the door, the glass windows...and the leader said when the shoots ended: "alive worth $500 more....now you killed him". give me a break, will you? shooting at a lumber/timber cabin from afar thru the windows and the door would kill the target? and later when the so-called Cincinnati drinker/drunk came to town, he found the robbers in front the post office then he started shooting WITH HIS TWO GUNS at very close range, his shootings were so lame, the way he held his guns was so funny, and his two guns kept shooting, at such close distance, his double guns....? well, i just can't go on to tell you how bad this movie is

"When my father died he was trying to tell me something, Dos Equis." When fugitive John Mason's (Slater) father is killed by a group of masked bandits he decides to hunt them down and get his revenge. Things get complicated when he realizes that the bandits are closer to home then he thought. I have said a few times now that I don't know what happened to the western genre. After "Dances With Wolves", "Tombstone" and "Open Range" the genre seemed to fall off drastically and is now limited to very low budget cheesy made-for-TV movie type movies. I was looking forward to this one mainly because of the cast. I thought finally a descent western that I will like. While this is a great many times better then 90% if the recent contributions, this felt the same as the rest. This could have easily been another made-for-TV movie if not for the cast. Nothing really original and this is not the return of the great westerns I was hoping for but this is easily one of the better ones in recent memory. Which isn't really saying that much I know. Overall, worth watching and entertaining but it is a little slow and still a B-rate western. I give it a B-.