Chris King Seriously, too many arty farty reviews here. Sure it's not High Plains Drifter or A Fistfull of Dollars but it's a steady Western. Enough action to keep you watching, a plot which while not being outstanding is simple to follow and a bit of sex appeal in the form of Lizzy Caplan. A large proportion of big(ish) name character actors bring life to what could have been pretty bland characters. All in all an enjoyable flick which really doesn't need over analyzing. View it for what it is. A fun western. If I had to be critical though, I'm not a fan of the single frame cut scenes which seem to be there to flesh out what would be a short story.

andell More a short film than an actual film, "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride" tries to distinguish itself as a Western that seems to challenge just about every convention that Westerns used to stand for.The question is, is that really a good idea? The plot, in a nutshell, is as follows: a woman (Juliette Flowers) is trying to recover the body of her deceased lover (Ransom Pride) from a malformed mystic, who will turn the body over, as long as she gets in return the brother (Champ Pride) of the deceased lover.We really don't know why Champ is important to the mystic...or even why she's holding the body of Ransom Pride in the first place...although we are given a rather difficult to follow explanation in the end if you make it that far. If anything, the explanation makes events that happen in the film seem even more unusual! Just as unusual is the idea that Champ's Father Early (Dwight Yoakam) hates Champ for what happened to his wife, who died when Champ was born. In fact, he makes a pilgrimage to recover both Champ AND Ransom's body from the mystic...after he discovered that Juliette was planning on trading Champ for Ransom's body.Naturally he holds a grudge against Juliette, who he blames for Ransom's death, and suckering Champ into servitude, so he plans to kill her...until he is shot dead...by Champ! This film is plagued by several factors, among them: Unusual action edits which, after an action scene takes place, are for some reason reversed and choppy.A strange assortment of characters, including the mystic (who looks more like a Voodoo practitioner than a Native American or Mexican priestess), a little person, a drunken black veteran of the Civil War (I think) and pot smoking siamese twins.Other scenes, which don't seem to make any sense at all, except if you consider them in the film to expand on the running time.I'd put the running time of the film officially at around 80 minutes...but if you were to trim out the scenes that make no sense and those strange rewinding segments, I suspect you'd cut that down to between 50-60 minutes! Jon Foster is absolutely gorgeous in the film...and Scott Speedman and Lizzy Caplan aren't terrible to look at. It's just a little eye candy, but it's no where near enough to save THIS film!

Flash Back The people who gave this a bad review clearly do not understand the B rate movie genre. I stumbled upon this little gem by accident and really liked from the start. By 10 minutes in I was on the edge of my seat wondering what the director was going to do next. I'm not going to spoil this by providing plot clues and tidbits about exciting scenes. I'm just going to give my impression and let you decide for yourselves. This movie is well casted. The script isn't awful. The cinematography is gripping. The story line is fitting of the genre. The acting is OK. Suspend disbelief for a few moments, just remember that it's B Rate, and enjoy it for what it is.

DevastationBob-3 It cost me a dollar to rent this and I have to say it's the worst use I've ever put a dollar to. To think I could have put that as a down payment on a pack of gum or just turned Washington's head into a mushroom. But no, I had to rent the interminable Last Rites of Ransom Pride.It begins with a voice-over telling us of Juliette's(Lizzy Kaplan)sad childhood and how she had to kill an evil general in his sleep. It's not a terribly long opening narration, and then we're hit with the oddly fonted subtitles telling us it's 11 years later, 11 years after she told us the voice-over or the actual events, we can only guess. By the way, the subtitles are very hard to read, which is unfortunate because they're used quite often.Other than the little bit of back story we get, the characters aren't particularly deep. Lizzy Kaplan pretty much keeps one expression on her face for the entire flick and Dwight Yokam calls her whore a lot, but that might not have been in the script. Peter Dinklage does as well as he can with the material, but despite this contribution, his character is simply named "Dwarf" in the credits. Don't seem right.A lot of what follows is intermittently plastered with instant replays of previous scenes and "artsy" shaky cam shots of animal skulls and birds that jerk like they're in a Tool video. These don't really add anything to the film and only serve to prolong the misery of watching it. It's not a terribly complicated story either, but Tiller sure takes the scenic route getting us there. It's like he's slowly winding a broken jack in the box. You want the weasel to pop, but you know it never will.If you like westerns I wouldn't suggest seeing this, and if you don't like westerns, I still wouldn't.