Dinner with the Smiths

I rented a couple movies last night.

Mr and Mrs Smith with Branjolina was surprisingly good. It moved well, had good action, and pretty good characterization as well. The juxtaposition of everyday situations and vigorous hitman/woman gunplay was funny. It didn't work as well as in the Incredibles, but still good. Definitely worth the rental if you haven't seen it yet.

The other was a western called Gunslinger's Revenge. I have a thing about westerns, but this was no John Wayne movie. Gunslinger's Revenge sucks, don't even rent it.

The thing about a movie with a title like Gunslinger's Revenge, you would expect there to be guns, some slinging of said guns, and perhaps a plot centered around revenge. None of that really pans out.

The movie is told from the perspective of a half-indian boy and his white doctor father. The father character is just annoying. He's a vegetarian pacifist and is played by an Italian actor who's voice is badly overdubbed (the film seems to have been shot in Europe). Because the doctor won't do anything to actual solve his own problems, like the villains kidnapping his son and threatening his family, other characters like his Indian wife and crazy neighbor essentially do his fighting for him. This is not something I can respect. Harvey Kietel does well as the famous gunslinger grandfather. David Bowie plays the villain. His American accent isn't American enough, a common problem on the film, but he makes for a decent dangerous lunatic.