Title: The Righteous and the Wicked

Running time: 96 minutes, Rated PG-13

Hoss Williams is an elderly notorious bandit who gathers a group of men to do one more score, the payroll office at the mines. Little does he know that a lone man is hot on his trail to collect the bounty placed on his head, and the men he gathered are not as square as he thought.

The copy writer who wrote the description on the DVD cover didn’t see this movie at all.  Sure it’s got some slow moments, but keep track of who the characters are before you go throwing names and storylines about.  There is a character named Hobbs, but he’s not the central character of the film, and the robbery has nothing to do with him.

This film is low budget, but they worked hard on paying attention to detail.  The story had elements of Reservoir Dogs, with a group of men who barely know each other and a heist gone bad; then there’s a sort of Angel of Death character pursuing them. The acting wasn’t great by all, but Jeremy Owen and Justin Tade stand out as the best of all of them. The cinematography was gorgeous. The director Craig A. Butler and Director of Photography/Actor Billy Garberina both explained in the commentary that they used special filters in order to get the sky so blue in the day scenes. Although I do think it was a little odd that the majority of the scenes were shot in the day, which gave the the feel that all of the events occurred in a single day; it may have been an oversight by them or I missed something completely.

The special features include a commentary and a very long behind the scenes hand-cam style featurette with cast and crew interviews.

If you like low budget westerns, you might like The Righteous and the Wicked. Westerns aren’t really my bag, but I was able to tolerate the film without getting bored. If they were to get funding to make a sequel, I would prefer to see more of Justin Tade’s character Marion, the shovel enthusiast.

Total Rating: C

Reviewed by: JM Willis