mtownsel2 I was not expecting a movie with such a perfectly, horrific presence and reality check of the horrors of war. I love the transition between the Scott Eastwood and Walton Goggins faces of El Diablo. It was so well done that I almost missed the obvious. How could Ezra keep pace with Jackson unless they were one and the same?I loved how Lawrence Roeck used Benjamin Carver, DannyGlover's character, to finally weave the two (Jackson and Ezra) into one person. I take my hats off to Carlos De Los Rios and Lawrence Roeck for designing a character so flawed in his own perception of the world; so lost in his own wickedness, and so far grace and humanity. Of course, Scott Eastwood's fair-face portrayal of Jackson plays into building upon your sympathies. We have all bought in false realities and if we were lucky, lived to regret it. In this movie, you also see a character, an excellent soldier, affected by his own engagement in the U.S. Civil War. There is no doubt that Erza is suffering from emotional effects of war on him as we know of them today as PTSD and other acute war-related syndromes. It's no surprise, once you understand the distress that soldiers experience during war, that they find it hard to be the same, emotionally, ever again. There is do doubt that war fatigue could turn the mildest of people into mentally traumatized killers. We all wrestle with the nature of our souls at times and we are not solder or we're never in the military. Jackson has not lost his soul. It's been possessed. His own dead brother appears before him as proof. The imagery was hauntingly relevant.Carlos De Los Rios and Lawrence Roeck have simply updated the reality of surviving the Civil War with accepted knowledge of the symptoms of psychological damage of being forced them to kill. In the case one peculiar consequence; a monster is born: Diablo - It's one Hell of a movie!

gingerlead-1 Overall it was a good movie as a old-time Western. The problem I had was it describing it as him going after his abducted wife when it was someone else's wife in reality. I know that's probably a spoiler for the movie writer but get the facts straight instead of trying to surprise the viewers because that was the most disappointing part the rest was pretty good

jett_julie Okay, I've seen every movie the elder Eastwood has been in and I think what makes him so great is he picked his material well. Scott should have known better than take this role. He's never going to be the cowboy Clint was, period. He shouldn't even try. The only saving grace in this movie is the cinematography, it was beautifully photographed. The problem was the story, it just wasn't well written. If you don't have a good story, without holes, you're screwed. For example, after he leaves the Indians who save him, Eastwood's character goes to reach into his saddlebag and there appears to be hair with blood in the bag. Is it a scalp? There's never any explanation given. Did Eastwood scalp the Indians? Big holes like that ruin this movie. Also the dialog was terrible. I stuck with it hoping I'd get an explanation and never did. At the end I just said, WTF???

mbloyd Lawrence Roeck's second feature has the skeleton of an interesting symbolic western -- at times even a western psychological thriller -- but the screenplay never provides flesh or a beating heart. The attempt feels like a rough draft. Despite its short running time and dislike for extra details, it locks into a loose rhythm in the early going. Walton Goggins' character, played with a wicked spirit, brings a great deal of life to the film in his brief scenes. Goggins' presence begs for comparisons to The Hateful Eight, which wouldn't be in Diablo's favor. Eastwood, upstaged by Goggins and Glover, takes a bold move in his willingness to so directly invoke his father. The two look uncannily alike. His primary acting strengths lie elsewhere, but the flimsiness of his character here can be chalked up to poor writing. Technical credits are strong, and despite a somewhat foreboding score, the film looks excellent for its budget.