Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Blu-ray Movie Review

It's stylish, no doubt about it. But is that enough?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 13, 2010

The Western is probably the most quintessentially American genre of film, perhaps even more so than the musical. The history of the United States is, after all, one of westward expansion and that slow creep toward the Pacific has given filmmakers a wealth of storylines. While a lot of Westerns have fallen into the B-movie cliché of good guys versus bad guys (typically Indians, as they were uniformly called back in the day), when one looks over the entire history of this genre, there are really some amazingly profound and nuanced contributions to the oater idiom. As long ago as John Ford’s inimitable work, notably Stagecoach, we got incredibly well rounded characters who just happened to find themselves in a western setting. While the 1940s tended to churn out programmers, courtesy of budget lined Republic and Universal, the 1950s saw a whole new explosion of thoughtful entries in the Western genre, including some unusual offerings from Anthony Mann. The 1960s gave us everything from Marlon Brando’s sole directing effort, One Eyed Jacks, to Sam Peckinpah’s iconic The Wild Bunch, and just for good measure we had the populist offering of George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, to name but three Westerns with decidedly different approaches and techniques. The ensuing decades saw a number of high profile, sometimes intentionally "artsy" takes on the Western, including everything from Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller to Eastwood's Unforgiven. It would be easy to dismiss director Tiller Russell’s 2009 feature The Last Rites of Ransom Pride as a studied case in style over substance, one which attempts to invest the Western genre with a sort of proto-punk/pulp ambience, and that feeling is probably supported by Tiller’s obscenity laced commentary, where he can barely get a sentence out without dropping the f-bomb (repeatedly). But upon further inspection The Last Rites of Ransom Pride may actually have a little meat on its admittedly very stylish bones.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride has an interesting non-linear storyline, as we are introduced to its gun toting heroine (yes, heroine), Juliette (Lizzie Caplan), via voiceover and witness one of her defining moments as a very young girl, when she slits the throat of a marauding General. The timeframe shifts dramatically as we then witness a shootout which ends up killing Juliette’s lover, Ransom Pride (Scott Speedman). That sets a rather operatic chain of events into motion where Juliette, accompanied by Ransom’s brother Champ (Jon Foster), attempts to retrieve Ransom’s body so that she may bury it properly. This brings Juliette into contact with a positively Fellini-esque assortment of truly bizarre characters, including a gun wielding dwarf (Peter Dinklage) and a badly scarred Mexican woman (Cote de Pablo), who refuses to part with Ransom’s body due to a convoluted tale of vengeance. Country-western star Dwight Yoakam is on hand in a riveting, and unbelievably weird, performance as Ransom’s father, an alcoholic “Reverend” who is out to settle an old score with Juliette. Mix in some Siamese twins, a cameo by Beverly Hills 90210 sensation Jason Priestley and Kris Kristofferson as the main bad guy, and you have a rather odd combination of ingredients that give The Last Rites of Ransom Pride a distinctly exotic flavor that doesn’t always gel well with the usually meat and potatoes world of the Western. The gun toting heroine aspect raises at least the faint ghostly memory of Sam Raimi's underappreciated The Quick and the Dead, but Last Rites is in another world completely, both stylistically and story-wise.

Director Tiller Russell does have an incredible eye, and this film is filled with a series of heavily post-processed shots which give us everything from incredibly grainy black and white flashbacks to largely desaturated, sepia-toned “present day” offerings. The turn of the century world along the Mexico-United States border comes viscerally alive in this Canada-shot production, with that sort of odd, almost Butch Cassidy-esque combination of the old and nascent modern world colliding in a chaotic jumble. Tiller doesn’t seem to care much that some elements in this film are decidedly anachronistic, and though historically the film may be off by a decade or two, it gives The Last Rites of Ransom Pride a surreal element that fits well with the film’s overall carnival like setting.

The best thing about Last Rites, aside from its unusual but provocative visual sense, are the performances. Lizzie Caplan is both gorgeous and fierce as Juliette, and my hunch is she has a major career ahead of her once she breaks out of the low budget, indie fare world. Kristofferson is crusty and strangely appealing in the villain role, and the supporting cast is interesting, to say the least. But it’s Yoakam who is simply unforgettable in a disturbing and just way out there performance that simply has to be seen to be believed.

Roger Vernon’s evocative cinematography also helps to give The Last Rites of Ransom Pride one of the most distinctive looks of any recent Western. This unapologetically “hip” approach may in fact be off-putting to some audience members who want their Westerns to appear “reg’lar”, but if you’re open to quick cuts and varying film stocks, Last Rites has a lot to offer. While Jeff Danna’s score is as idiosyncratic as the rest of the film, it gives Last Rites some propulsive, rock influenced cues. (Danna’s work here is completely different than his lyrical Celtic albums released in conjunction with his brother Mycheal).

And so what is one to make of a film this patently self-conscious and tipped toward the outré side of things? It all boils down to each individual’s tolerance level for something a bit unusual in a tried and true genre. While The Last Rites of Ransom Pride offers a probably too over the top, patently operatic, storyline, there’s so much weirdness here in virtually every frame that those with a taste for the bizarre probably won’t mind that much. Just don’t have the kids in the room if you listen to that obscenity-laced Russell commentary.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride features one of the more intentionally stylized images in recent memory, and that may affect the way individuals respond to the perceived quality. Encoded via AVC, in 1080p and 1.78:1, Last Rites has a variety of visual tricks up its bandolero sleeve, including lots of extremely grainy black and white shots with blown out contrast. Alternatively, we also get a wealth of desaturated segments (in fact a lot of this film is extremely desaturated) with low contrast, especially in the dark scenes. But this is all no doubt intentional. Detail is reasonably sharp throughout this presentation, especially in the desaturated day scenes. It's really impossible to talk about the color palette here, as everything is processed so strangely, but suffice it to say the film has a very distinctive look that often tends toward sepia tones. My one real qualm with this transfer is that it's really unclear whether we're dealing with post-processing or actual digital noise in some of the desert scenes. It looks like noise to me, but it may well have been another "stylistic" choice the filmmakers made to give this film an unusual appearance.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride has a reasonably effective lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix. The surround immersion is excellent in the shootout scene and the climactic chase scene between horse riders and Juliette on a motorcycle with a sidecar. Dialogue does tend to get buried in the mix quite a bit of the time, perhaps due to the "Method Acting" mumbling proclivities of some of the performers. Jeff Danna's anachronistic score is mixed rather loudly, and may distract some listeners as a result of that. There are several interesting sound effects utilized throughout the film, notably a loud, jarring "whoosh" noise during the quick cut interstitials, that make the sonic experience palpable. LFE is in fact rather robust throughout the film, but, again, it tends to overpower the general mix at times.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride features an expletive-laden commentary by director Tiller Russell and a second person I can only surmise is uncredited editor Doug Johnson, as he's never properly introduced. This commentary can be pretty much summed up, for better worse, by Russell's oft-used "f***in' awesome," and by that I don't mean to qualitatively describe the commentary, just give you some idea of what you'll be listening to for an hour and a half. Also included are some brief, and very effective, Web Teasers (HD; 2:56) which helped promote the film.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're in the mood for a decidedly different, in fact patently odd, western, you will probably enjoy The Last Rites of Ransom Pride, despite its obvious excesses. If you long for the days of John Wayne and John Ford, you'll probably do best to just pass this one by. I personally enjoyed this, if only for its very unique visual flair, and so am recommending it to you more adventurous viewers.